CNN:  A federal appeals court has tossed out key provisions of the sweeping health care reform bill championed by President Obama, setting up a likely election-year showdown at the Supreme Court over the landmark legislation.

A 2-1 panel of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Friday found that the law’s “individual mandate” section — requiring nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance by 2014 or face financial penalties — was an improper exercise of federal authority.

The individual mandate exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power and is unconstitutional,” Chief Judge Joel Dubina wrote. “This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives.”