The Courts

The House of Representatives and a group of Democratic attorneys general have filed amici briefs in the City of Chicago’s suit against HHS and CMS for refusing to set up a special enrollment period though healthcare.gov during the pandemic.

Tobacco control groups on Wednesday (June 17) sued FDA for not banning menthol-flavored cigarettes and providing no justification for its inaction, which they say violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

More than 100 House Democrats are asking FDA to lift restrictions on abortion drug mifepristone so that, at a minimum, doctors can mail the medication to patients’ homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Brockton v. Clayton County that discrimination on the basis of sex extends to gender identity and sexual orientation under Title VII of the Civil Rights law pertaining to employment will at the very least bolster the various lawsuits that transgender and other advocates have pledged over HHS’ non-discrimination rule released Friday (June 12), legal sources say.

A federal judge ruled Monday (June 8) that AbbVie did not violate antitrust law by filing more than 100 similar patents for its top-selling drug Humira.

A federal appeals court is grappling with whether states are required to reimburse Medicaid managed care plans for a controversial Obamacare tax -- and, if they aren’t, whether the federal government must pay back nearly $500 million to six states that challenged the regulatory regime surrounding the tax.

Hospitals that were underpaid by Medicare in fiscal 2014 through 2016 are not entitled to precise refunds because CMS’ alternative remedy -- a one-time, across-the-board rate increase in 2017 that was meant to roughly offset the previous underpayments -- was reasonable, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday (May 26).

A federal appeals court on Wednesday (May 20) upheld a lower-court ruling that invalidated New Hampshire’s plan to add work requirements to its Medicaid program -- a development that was expected based on an earlier appellate ruling against work requirements in Arkansas.

Health care experts and stakeholders across the ideological spectrum have filed more than two dozen amici or “friend of the court” briefs urging the Supreme Court to rule the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate valid or at the very least to find that if the mandate is illegal it can be clearly severed from the rest of the law.