On March 30, 2023, the District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued an opinion and order in Braidwood Mgmt. Inc. v. Becerra that vacates the implementation and enforcement of certain preventive service provisions...more
On September 7, 2022, a US district court judge for the Northern District of Texas issued a ruling that preventive care provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requiring private insurance plans to cover drugs that prevent...more
Changes are imminent for the Affordable Care Act and a range of other laws and regulations affecting the health care industry. Ballard Spahr attorneys established a Health Care Reform Initiative in 2008 to monitor and analyze...more
As LGBTQ rights have taken center stage in political and social issues, FordHarrison has been following ground-breaking litigation related to LGBTQ rights and providing updates. In the latest decision, a federal judge in...more
Timely Topics - The final rule implementing Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on May...more
Hobby Lobby took on the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that it must provide female employees certain contraceptives on religious grounds and won. March for Life, a pro-life organization, is trying to reach the same result but...more
Respondeat superior (literally, "let the master answer" in Latin) is a doctrine that applies when an employer or principal has the ability and authority to direct and control the pertinent acts of the employee. Put otherwise,...more
The United States Supreme Court granted Wheaton College, a religious non-profit college in Illinois, an injunction permitting the college to opt into the ACA contraception mandate’s accommodation scheme available to certain...more
Two federal appeals courts issued contradictory rulings on the validity of subsidies for the purchase of health insurance under the federal marketplace established pursuant to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). On July 22, a...more
In This Issue: - First Guidance following Hobby Lobby released - Implementation of the Affordable Care Act - Other Federal Regulatory Initiatives - Other Congressional and State Initiatives ...more
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires certain employers to cover women’s preventive health care under their nongrandfathered group health plans at no cost to employees. The U.S. Department of Health...more
On the last day of its 2013-2014 session, the U.S. Supreme Court held today that (1) for-profit companies are protected as "persons" under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) and (2) that the...more
On February 21, 2014, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-to-1 decision, denied a preliminary injunction enjoining the federal government from enforcing the self-certification provisions of the Affordable Care Act...more
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("ACA") has significantly changed the healthcare industry in the United States. Among the many changes is the new requirement that healthcare providers must provide all "Food...more
On November 26, 2013, the United States Supreme Court announced it would hear two cases that test the provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) known as the contraceptive mandate, which requires employer-provided group...more
Health & Welfare Plans - Health Care Reform: Supreme Court Grants Review to Two Cases Challenging ACA’s Contraception Coverage Mandate - The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases challenging...more
The Supreme Court will review two of the numerous lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) requirement that group health plans and insurers cover, without cost-sharing, contraceptives and/or abortifacients (the...more
The legitimacy of political speech from the pulpit is much debated. Some contend that religious institutions should be silent, because of separation of church and state or the inaccessibility of divine inspiration to...more
In Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. et al. v. Sebelius, et al.,1 an en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Mardel Inc., two for-profit corporations owned and operated by...more
On November 16, 2102, in Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. v. Sebelius, No. 12-1635 (D. D.C. Nov. 16, 2012), the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction to a closely held, for-profit...more