<P> Also, in addition to this combination of clauses being used to uphold federal laws affecting economic activity, they also were used to justify federal criminal laws . For example, Congress in the Federal Kidnapping Act (1932) made it a federal crime to transport a kidnapped person across state lines, because the transportation would be an act of interstate activity over which the Congress has power . It has also provided justification for a wide range of criminal laws relating to interference with the federal government's rightful operation, including federal laws against assaulting or murdering federal employees . </P> <P> In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012), the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act cannot be upheld under the Necessary and Proper Clause . Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his ruling that the mandate cannot "be sustained under the Necessary and Proper Clause as an integral part of the Affordable Care Act's other reforms . Each of this Court's prior cases upholding laws under that Clause involved exercises of authority derivative of, and in service to, a granted power . (...) The individual mandate, by contrast, vests Congress with the extraordinary ability to create the necessary predicate to the exercise of an enumerated power and draw within its regulatory scope those who would otherwise be outside of it . Even if the individual mandate is "necessary" to the Affordable Care Act's other reforms, such an expansion of federal power is not a "proper" means for making those reforms effective ." </P> <P> According to its proponents, this ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius returns the Necessary and Proper clause to its original interpretation outlined by John Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland . According to David Kopel, the clause "simply restates the background principle that Congress can exercise powers which are merely' incidental' to Congress's enumerated powers ." </P> <P> The specific term "Necessary and Proper Clause" was coined in 1926 by Associate Justice Louis Brandeis, writing for the majority in the Supreme Court decision in Lambert v. Yellowley, 272 U.S. 581 (1926), wherein the court upheld a law restricting medicinal use of alcohol as a necessary and proper exercise of power under the 18th Amendment establishing Prohibition in the United States . </P>

What does the elastic clause allow congress to do