By Nate Raymond
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide the legality of a key component of the Affordable Care Act that effectively gives a task force established under the landmark healthcare law known as Obamacare the ability to require that insurers cover preventive medical care services at no cost to patients.
The justices took up an appeal by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower court’s ruling that sided with a group of Christian businesses who objected to their employee health plans covering HIV-preventing medication and had argued that the task force’s structure violated the U.S. Constitution.
The justices are expected to hear arguments and issue a ruling by the end of June.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that by not allowing the U.S. president to remove members of the task force, the structure set up under the 2010 law championed by Democratic President Barack Obama infringed on presidential authority under a constitutional provision called the appointments clause.
The Justice Department said the 5th Circuit’s ruling jeopardizes the availability of critical preventive care including cancer screenings enjoyed by millions of Americans. That ruling marked the latest in a string of court decisions in recent years – including by the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court – deeming the structure of various executive branch and independent agencies unconstitutional.
The lawsuit followed earlier and unsuccessful efforts by Republicans and conservative litigants to abolish the Affordable Care Act through Congress or the courts.
The justices in 2021 rejected a bid to invalidate Obamacare by several Republican-led states that was backed by President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration, the third time the court had preserved the law since its 2010 enactment. Trump returns to the presidency on Jan. 20.
The latest case challenged only part of the law. It was filed by lawyers with America First Legal, a group founded by Stephen Miller, who Trump has tapped to serve as White House deputy chief of staff for policy in his second term.
America First Legal filed the case on behalf of a group of Texas small businesses who objected on religious grounds to a mandate that their employee health plans cover pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV (PrEP) for free.
The plaintiffs have argued that the PrEP requirement forces business owners to pay for services that “encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity and intravenous drug use” despite their religious beliefs.
They challenged not just that requirement but the entire federal mandate that has provided about 150 million Americans free access to preventive care services including cancer screenings under Obamacare.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, whose 2018 ruling declaring all of Obamacare unconstitutional was the subject of the 2021 Supreme Court case.
O’Connor sided with the plaintiffs by blocking the enforcement of the federal mandate nationwide.
The 5th Circuit then partly reversed that decision, saying O’Connor went too far by blocking it nationally rather than issuing an injunction that applied only to the plaintiffs. But it agreed with the plaintiffs that the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which under Obamacare was given the job of issuing preventive-care recommendations, were appointed in violation of the appointments clause.
U.S. Circuit Judge Don Willett, a Trump appointee, wrote for the panel that because the task force wielded “unreviewable power,” its members needed to have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate – yet had not been. Instead, its 16 members are volunteers who serve four-year terms and are convened by an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.
Because the task force’s structure was deemed unconstitutional, Willett said the Texas businesses were entitled to an injunction preventing them from being forced to comply with preventive-care mandates to the extent the task force recommended them.
The Biden administration on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court said that ruling was wrong and that the HHS secretary retains the ability to remove and supervise task force members.
Even if the 5th Circuit was right that the law insulated the task force from supervision, the Biden administration argued that problem could be solved by severing a single provision of the healthcare law.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Will Dunham)
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