The Fifth Circuit unanimously held that unelected bureaucrats don’t get to make unilateral decisions about Americans’ healthcare coverage, which has led to tremendous increases in the cost of insurance.
THREAD:
/2 Today, with co-counsel Jonathan F. Mitchell, we secured a resounding win before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Braidwood Management Inc. v. Becerra. A unanimous panel of the Fifth Circuit held that a key provision of the Affordable Care Act violates Article II’s Appointments Clause by empowering the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to dictate the preventive care that all private insurers must cover.
/3 In other words—unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats don't get to make unilateral decisions about Americans’ healthcare coverage, which has led to tremendous increases in the cost of insurance for all Americans.
/4 The Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” requires all private health insurers to cover preventive care without any cost-sharing arrangements such as copays or deductibles. It also requires private insurers to cover any preventive care that receives an “A” or “B” rating from the United States Preventive Services Task Force.
/5 We argued that this arrangement violates Article II of the Constitution because the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force wield significant powers yet are not appointed as “officers of the United States” as required by Article II.
/6 The Fifth Circuit unanimously agreed and held that the members of the Task Force are “principal officers” who must be appointed by the President with the Senate’s advice and consent and that the Affordable Care Act violates Article II’s Appointments Clause by empowering the Task Force to impose preventive-care coverage mandates on private insurers.
/7 Effectively, all preventive-care coverage mandates imposed by the Task Force since March 23, 2010, are unenforceable in the Fifth Circuit, and private insurers in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi need not comply with them.
/8 The Fifth Circuit also revived our Appointments Clause challenges to the preventive-care coverage mandates imposed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) and remanded for the district court to further consider those claims.
/1🚨BREAKING — AFL just filed a new lawsuit against HHS and CMS to expose the architects behind a Biden-era organ transplant policy that financially rewards higher transplant volume and prioritizes race in transplant decisions.
/2 Last week, AFL filed a lawsuit to determine who within the Biden Administration was behind its race-based organ transplant policy.
This new lawsuit seeks to uncover the outside influencers who shaped the program, and why.
/3 The lawsuit targets the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for failing to produce records tied to a federal transplant program that rewards hospitals for increasing kidney transplant volume and embeds race into the process.
/1🚨VICTORY — AFL DEFEATED Maricopa County’s attempt to hijack County Recorder Justin Heap’s election integrity lawsuit and block us from representing him.
An Arizona court fully rejected the blatant power grab.
Our lawsuit against Maricopa County will now proceed.
/2 After Recorder Heap chose AFL to represent him in a lawsuit against the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell filed another lawsuit against him, claiming that she had the right to select his attorney, and she did not want AFL to represent him.
/3 In its ruling, the Maricopa County Superior Court held that Arizona law does not give the county attorney authority to control a county officer’s legal representation.
/1🚨VICTORY — AFL has BROKEN Nashville’s years-long stonewalling over the Covenant School shooter’s “manifesto.”
A Tennessee appeals court REJECTED Nashville’s attempt to withhold records related to the shooting and keep the public in the dark.
/2 The ruling from the Court of Appeals of Tennessee at Nashville reverses most of a lower court decision that allowed the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County (Metro) to withhold the shooter’s “manifesto” in full.
/3 The court’s ruling made clear that government agencies cannot rely on sweeping legal theories to justify total secrecy, and must instead conduct a record-by-record review, redacting only what is lawfully protected and releasing the rest under Tennessee’s Public Records Act.
AFL has uncovered that MULTIPLE states lack evidence to support their claims of harm in their lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s federal wind regulation review.
/2 Last year, 17 states and D.C. sued the Trump Administration and several federal agencies, challenging the implementation of the Wind Memo, claiming it would cause irreparable harm to each state’s environment, climate, and economic, transportation, and security interests.
/3 The plaintiff states include New York, Massachusetts, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
AFL filed a brief on behalf of @tedcruz, @Jim_Jordan, and 26 members of Congress urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship and restore the Fourteenth Amendment’s original meaning.
/2 AFL’s brief, filed in partnership with Boyden Gray PLLC, supports President Trump’s Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.”
/3 Executive Order 14160 restores the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which the lower courts wrongly blocked by expanding birthright citizenship beyond what the U.S. Constitution allows.
AFL filed a new amicus brief after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Noem v. Al Otro Lado, a major case on whether courts can rewrite federal immigration law and block critical border security tools.
SCOTUS must reverse the Ninth Circuit’s ruling.
/2 AFL’s brief, filed with Boyden Gray PLLC, on behalf of U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa and U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, Ted Budd, Mike Lee, Kevin Cramer, and Josh Hawley, urges SCOTUS to reverse the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on the merits and stop a decision that would cripple border security.
/3 The Supreme Court’s decision to take the case puts this dispute on the main stage.