- On July 1, 2024
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has a tradition of issuing its most controversial verdicts in June, during the last few days of its annual term. On Friday, June 28, 2024, SCOTUS issued verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs in Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Both matters challenged commercial fishing regulations, a seemingly innocuous topic.
However, the decisions are controversial because when finding in favor of the fishermen, SCOTUS overturned a legal standard known as “the Chevron deference” or “the Chevron doctrine.” Dating back to a 1984 ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the doctrine applied to 40 years of legal challenges of federal regulations. If the federal law behind a regulation was unclear, the Chevron doctrine required federal judges to uphold the administrative agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as their interpretation was reasonable. Now, federal judges must rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws and not give any deference to the opinions of agency policy experts.
So, how will this ruling impact health insurance and policy in the years ahead? Since health insurance and healthcare are generally such highly regulated industries, federal requirements have an impact on all aspects of our industry. Think COBRA requirements, HIPAA/HITECH standards, ACA rules, Medicare rates, Transparency in Coverage rule standards, Mental Health Parity, etc. It was always possible to challenge a federal rule in court, but with the Chevron deference in place, the authority of federal judges was limited. Now, we can expect many more legal challenges to federal healthcare rules, with potentially far-reaching results.