 Most visibly during the 2012 term , in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius , Sotomayor was part of a landmark 5 – 4 majority that upheld most of the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ( while being part of a dissent against the reliance upon the Constitution 's Taxing and Spending Clause rather than Commerce Clause in arriving at the support ) . Legal writer Jeffrey Toobin wrote , " Sotomayor 's concerns tended toward the earthbound and practical . Sometimes , during oral arguments , she would go on tangents involving detailed questions about the facts of cases that would leave her colleagues stupefied , sinking into their chairs . This time , though , she had a simple line of inquiry . States require individuals to buy automobile insurance ( implicitly suggesting the unavoidable comparison to health insurance and the fairness of the applying the same principle to health insurance as well ) . " Sotomayor concluded with the incisive rhetorical flourish in the Court directed at the attorneys : " Do you think that if some states decided not to impose an insurance requirement that the federal government would be without power to legislate and require every individual to buy car insurance ? " For Toobin , this distinction drawn by Sotomayor was the heart of the argument for the case in which she was part of the prevailing majority opinion . 
