Virginia v. Sebelius

Issue: (1) Whether the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit erred when it became the first circuit to deny that a state of the Union has standing to defend its own code of laws; (2) whether the Fourth Circuit erred, and opened a circuit split, when it construed the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act contrary to the construction placed upon it by the chief law officer of the Commonwealth of Virginia by holding it to be merely symbolic and therefore not a real law capable of giving rise to a sovereign injury; (3) whether the Fourth Circuit erred when it read the political question doctrine prong of Massachusetts v. Mellon as having continued vitality so as to prevent a state from challenging an enactment of the United States on enumerated powers grounds; and (4) whether the power claimed by Congress in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) to mandate that a citizen purchase a good or service from another citizen is unconstitutional because the claimed power exceeds the outer limits of the Commerce Clause even as executed by the Necessary and Proper Clause.