SCOTUS NEWS
By Amy Howe
on 10 January 2025
at 8:28 p.m
The court added three cases to its 2024-45 docket on Friday. (Katie Barlow)
On Friday evening, the Supreme Court added three new cases to its docket for the period 2024-25. The cases, involving issues ranging from the constitutionality of appointments to an HHS task force to student loan forgiveness and publicity in tax cases, are likely to be among the last cases argued during the current term.
In Becerra v. Braidwood Management, the judges agreed, to mount a challenge to the structure of the US Preventive Services Task Force, part of the Department of Health and Human Services that issues recommendations for preventive medical services. The Affordable Care Act requires health insurance companies to cover some of the recommended services at no cost to patients.
Four individuals and two small businesses religiously objecting to the ACA’s requirement that health insurers provide coverage for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which can be highly effective in 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 US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed. The appeals court acknowledged that the HHS secretary can remove members of the task force at any time, for virtually any reason. But because, in the court’s view, the HHS secretary did not otherwise supervise members of the task force, the appeals court held that their appointments were nonetheless unconstitutional.
The appeals court rejected the government’s request to cut the task force’s independence provision, allowing the HHS secretary to review some of the task force’s recommendations.
The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, telling the justices that the 5th Circuit 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 . as the Biden administration’s “dire predictions about what might happen if the appeals court decision is allowed to stand.”
In Department of Education v. Career Colleges and Schools of Texas Justices will review a 5th Circuit ruling that suspended implementation of a rule intended to streamline the process for reviewing student loan forgiveness requests from borrowers whose schools defrauded them or were shut down .
The justices declined to take up another issue in the case, challenging the 5th Circuit’s decision to block implementation of the rule across the United States — a “nationwide” or “universal” injunction — instead of simply prohibiting the Department of Education from applying the rule to the for-profit schools that challenge the rule. The Biden administration has asked the justices to weigh the propriety of such injunctions in a case currently on the court’s emergency docket, but the justices have yet to respond to that request.
The last of the three cases, Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Zuch, involves when a tax hearing becomes contested – that is, no longer a direct controversy.
The three cases will likely be discussed in April, with a decision to follow in late June or early July.
This article was originally published on Howe on the Court.