134 articles
The often-challenged Affordable Care Act suffered a potentially crippling constitutional blow in federal court on Thursday, when a trial judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the government had wrongly spent billions of dollars in the past two years to reimburse insurance companies for providing health coverage at lower costs to low- and moderate-income consumers.
Five federal judges, breaking ranks with a rising number of their colleagues on the federal courts of appeals, predicted on Thursday that the federal health care law’s birth-control mandate ultimately will fall, when tested in the Supreme Court by non-profit religious groups.
A new challenge to the federal mandate requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty stirred up a major constitutional debate in a federal appeals court on Friday. However, in the end, all eleven judges — relying on sharply conflicting views — rejected the challenge.
Commentary Amid widening claims that religious liberty in America is under siege, the Supreme Court over the past year and and a half has reacted eight times to one of the most intense and emotionally charged conflicts within that broader controversy.
Issuing a new round of rules to carry out two Supreme Court rulings on women’s access to free birth control, the Obama administration cleared the way on Tuesday for some for-profit businesses to receive an exemption if their owners object to contraceptives because of religious beliefs, but it also set the stage for government action to provide access to such services for those companies’ female employees.
The federal government’s top Supreme Court advocate moved again on Tuesday to make sure that the Justices are keeping up with the government’s success in heading off a round of new challenges to the birth-control mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
Reacting to a Supreme Court order to reconsider, a federal appeals court refused on Tuesday for a second time to stop enforcement of the federal government’s birth-control mandate against the University of Notre Dame.
UPDATED 11:21 a.m. The Oklahoma petition for review before the appeals court rules is here. The state noted that it is willing to have its case, if granted, put on the same briefing schedule as King v. Burwell, and asks for a quick response to its petition if the Court wishes a response.
Ruling that the Obama administration has gone as far as it needed to avoid intruding on the religious beliefs of non-profit colleges, hospitals, and charities, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday upheld the latest version of the birth control mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The Obama administration’s attempt last summer to find a new way to give religious non-profit groups an exemption from the new health care law’s mandate for birth-control services did not go far enough, a federal judge in Florida decided in a temporary ruling on Tuesday.
UPDATE 5:27 p.m. The proposed new rules have now been published by the government.
Ruling that the federal health care law’s mandate to buy health insurance is a law about a tax but not about raising government revenue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday rejected a new constitutional challenge to that key part of the Affordable Care Act.