Court adds three new cases

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The Supreme Court on Friday evening added three new cases to its docket for the 2024-25 term. The cases, which involve issues ranging from the constitutionality of appointments to an HHS task force to student loan forgiveness and mootness in tax cases, are likely to be among the final cases argued during the current term.

In Becerra v. Braidwood Management, the justices agreed to take up a challenge to the structure of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services that issues recommendations for preventive medical services. The Affordable Care Act requires health insurers to cover some of those recommended services at no cost to patients.

Four individuals and two small businesses that object on religious grounds to the ACA’s requirement that health insurers provide coverage for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications, which can be highly effective at preventing HIV infection, went to federal court. They argued that the task force’s structure violates the Constitution’s appointments clause, which requires “principal” officers to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Both the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed. The court of appeals acknowledged that the HHS secretary can remove members of the task force at any time, for virtually any reason. But because the HHS secretary did not, in the court’s view, otherwise supervise members of the task force, the court of appeals determined, their appointments nonetheless violated the Constitution.

The court of appeals turned down the government’s request to excise the provision providing for the task force’s independence, allowing the HHS secretary to review some of the recommendations made by the task force.

The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, telling the justices that the 5th Circuit’s ruling “threatens enormous legal and practical consequences.”

The challengers, while defending the 5th Circuit’s decision, joined the Biden administration in arguing that review was warranted. Represented by Jonathan Mitchell, who argued on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump in Colorado’s effort to disqualify him from the 2024 ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the challengers also rejected what they described as the Biden administration’s “dire predictions of what might happen if the court of appeals’ ruling is allowed to stand.”

In Department of Education v. Career Colleges and Schools of Texas, the justices will review a ruling by the 5th Circuit that suspended the implementation of a rule intended to streamline the process for reviewing requests for student loan forgiveness from borrowers whose schools defrauded them or were shut down.

The justices declined to take up a second question in the case, challenging the 5th Circuit’s decision to block the implementation of the rule throughout the United States – a “nationwide” or “universal” injunction – rather than simply prohibiting the Department of Education from applying the rule to the for-profit colleges challenging the rule. The Biden administration has asked the justices to weigh in on the propriety of such injunctions in a case currently on the court’s emergency docket, but the justices have not yet acted on that request.

The last of the three cases, Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Zuch, involves when a tax hearing becomes moot – that is, no longer a live controversy.
The three cases are likely to be argued in April, with a decision to follow by late June or early July.

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court. 

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