Photo by afagen.

The Supreme Court announced today that they would hear a challenge to the legality of President Barack Obama’s health-care reform act, which was passed in 2010.

Dozens of lawsuits challenging the validity of the law — and particularly the law’s mandate that nearly every American have insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty — have been filed at the state level, including Virginia, where the challenge was eventually dismissed by an appeals court. (Somewhere, we imagine that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is smiling.)

The Court is expected to make a decision in the case sometime in the middle of 2012, right as Obama will be in the throes of his reelection campaign.