Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and a group of 21 other Democrats filed a “friend of the court” brief with the Sixth Circuit Jan. 21, supporting President Barack Obama’s landmark Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Senate majority leader and House minority leader’s amicus brief, filed Firday with a slew of other amicus briefs supporting the law, asserts the constitutionality of the so-called individual mandaterequiring all Americans to purchase health insurance by 2014.

The lawmakers wrote that the legislation is a "valid exercise of congress’s enumerated constitutional power to regulate commerce among the several states," in the court documents.

"Congress also has power under the Necessary and Proper Clause to adopt the minimum coverage requirement as a means congress deems appropriate and conducive to accomplish the ends of the [PPACA]," and the law “tests no limits and approaches no slippery slope,” the pols wrote in their brief.