Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a case challenging the sufficiency of due process protections in the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) and National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), effectively confirming that the current safeguards are constitutionally sufficient.
In Doe v. Rodgers, a surgeon brought an action against the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the NPDB, and several individual officials who administer the NPDB, alleging that the NPDB wrongfully accepted, kept, and distributed a “false and ...
On June 1, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously settled a long-standing dispute over a subjective versus objective standard for scienter under the False Claims Act (FCA), holding that a defendant’s own subjective belief is relevant to scienter, rather than what an “objectively reasonable” person may have known or believed.
The case in question, U.S. ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu Inc., consolidated from two lower court decisions, involved allegations that the defendants, two retail pharmacy chains, overcharged the government for prescription drugs in violation of ...
During the past several turbulent weeks for the U.S. health care system, rulings in the case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA have called into question the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (“FDA’s”) scientific review process to approve new drug applications. While the U.S. Supreme Court acted on the afternoon of Friday, April 21, 2023 to preserve access to the drug mifepristone while the case continues in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the future of mifepristone—and the FDA’s authority to approve new drugs—will continue to be debated on appeal.
As explained in greater detail by our colleague Stuart M. Gerson, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down two major, and quickly decided, rulings on January 13, 2022. After hearing oral arguments only six days earlier, the Court issued two unsigned decisions per curiam. A 5-4 decision in Biden v. Missouri dissolved a preliminary injunction against enforcement of an interim final rule (“Rule”) promulgated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), requiring recipients of federal Medicare and Medicaid funding to ensure that their employees are vaccinated against COVID-19.
On the evening of Wednesday, December 22, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States announced that it will hold a special session on January 7, 2022, to hear oral argument in cases concerning whether two Biden administration vaccine mandates should be stayed. One is an interim final rule promulgated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”); the other is an Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”) issued by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”). The CMS interim final rule, presently stayed in 24 states, would require COVID-19 vaccination for staff employed at Medicare and Medicaid certified providers and suppliers. The OSHA ETS, which requires businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure that workers are vaccinated against the coronavirus or otherwise to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing, was allowed to take effect when a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, to which the consolidated challenges had been assigned by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation issued a ruling, on December 17, 2021, lifting a stay that had been previously entered by the Fifth Circuit. Multiple private sector litigants and states immediately challenged the decision.
This Employment Law This Week® Monthly Rundown discusses the most important developments for employers in August 2019.
This episode includes:
- Increased Employee Protections for Cannabis Users
- First Opinion Letters Released Under New Wage and Hour Leadership
- New Jersey and Illinois Enact Salary History Inquiry Bans
- Deadline for New York State Anti-Harassment Training Approaches
- Tip of the Week
See below to watch the full episode – click here for story details and video.
We invite you to view Employment Law This Week® – tracking the latest developments that could ...
On February 27, 2019, Tennessee-based holding company Vanguard Healthcare, LLC (“Vanguard”), agreed to pay over $18 million to settle a False Claims Act (“FCA”) action brought by the United States and the state of Tennessee for “grossly substandard nursing home services.” The settlement stems from allegations that five Vanguard-operated facilities failed to do the following: (1) administer medications as prescribed, (2) provide standard infection control resulting in urinary tract and wound infections, (3) attend to the basic nutrition and hygiene ...
Since the inauguration of President Trump, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has taken quite a few significant jabs and blows. When Congress failed to repeal the ACA, Congress instead eliminated the individual mandate penalty through the GOP tax bill. The individual mandate penalty was one of the main pillars of the ACA because it effectively widened the pool of participants who buy health insurance in order to keep costs down. While removal of this penalty hit the ACA where it hurt, the true threat to the stability of the ACA arose when the Trump Administration announced that it would no ...
Executive Order Delay Trumps Administration Policy Development
President Trump's first hundred days did not produce the event that most people in the cybersecurity community expected – a Presidential Executive Order supplanting or supplementing the Obama administration's cyber policy – but that doesn't mean that this period has been uneventful, particularly for those in the health care space.
The events of the period have cautioned us not to look for an imminent Executive Order. While White House cybersecurity coordinator Robert Joyce recently stated that a forthcoming ...
Congress is currently considering two bills that would dramatically alter the ways in which all federal agencies develop and publish rules. If enacted, both would create significant new obligations for agencies such as CMS and the FDA, expand the scope of judicial review of rules, and would increase the potential for political influence over the rulemaking process. Both bills passed the House on party-line votes, and are under consideration by the Senate.
The first bill, H.R. 5, would overhaul multiple phases of the federal rulemaking process. These proposed changes would make the ...
[caption id="attachment_1416" align="alignright" width="113"] Stuart Gerson[/caption]
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided (6-2, with Kennedy writing for the majority and Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissenting) the case of Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. The matter before the Court involved Vermont law requiring certain entities, including health insurers, to report payments relating to health care claims and other information relating to health care services to a state agency for compilation in an all-inclusive health care database.
In an important victory ...
With the untimely passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the best known and most controversial Justice on the Court, commentators, including this one, have been called upon to assess his legacy – both immediate and long term – in various areas of the law.
Justice Scalia was not known primarily as an antitrust judge and scholar. Indeed, in his confirmation hearing for the Court, he joked about what he saw as the incoherent nature of much of antitrust analysis. What he was best known for, of course, is his method of analysis of statutes and the Constitution: a literal ...
I have examined on this blog the various legal and regulatory issues implicated by telemedicine. Many of those issues involve the practice of medicine and how state medical boards interpret state laws and regulations impacting telemedicine, and how those boards enforce those laws. Believe it or not, a recent Supreme Court case may have an impact on how state boards do their business.
On February 25, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the North Carolina Dental Board (“Board”) was not insulated from federal antitrust liability under the so-called “state ...
On December 15, 2014, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. v. Owens, a class action removal case.
In short, the Dart case is welcome news to employers. Standards for removing a case from state to federal court have been an abiding point of concern for employers faced with "home town" class actions. In more recent times, this problem has become a point of interest to employers in health care and other industries that are beset by cybersecurity and data breach cases originating in state courts but calling for the application of federal privacy ...
Only last week, we informed you of the Supreme Court's somewhat surprising grant of cert. in the Fourth Circuit case of King v. Burwell, in which the court of appeals had upheld the government's view that the Affordable Care Act makes federal premium tax credits available to taxpayers in all states, even where the federal government, not the state, has set up an exchange.
The Administration has taken something of a PR buffeting in the week following, after its principal ACA technical advisor's comments on this issue were made public.
In any event, we suggested that the scheduled DC ...
In something of a surprise, the Supreme Court today granted certiorari in the Fourth Circuit case of King v. Burwell, in which the court of appeals had upheld the government's view that the Affordable Care Act makes federal premium tax credits available to taxpayers in all states, even where the federal government, not the state, has set up an exchange. In doing so, the Supreme Court rebuffed the Solicitor General's request that the Court decline cert. as various cases worked their way through the Courts of Appeals.
It was only a few days ago that the government had filed a brief in ...
As we noted in our various blogs and communications on the subject (HEAL Advisory and HEAL Blog), the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's action today, to rehear in December the Halbig case (Halbig v. Burwell, D.C. Cir., No. 14-508 ), challenging Obamacare subsidies in the federal health exchange, is not unexpected given the current makeup of the Court. This development now makes it more likely that the Supreme Court will not take action on the King cert petition (King v. Burwell, U.S. 4th Circuit , No. 14-1158) until after the DC ...
In the wake of the Hobby Lobby ruling with respect to the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage mandate, the Administration (which already has taken steps to fund contraception for employees affected by their employers' exemption) is attempting also to deal with the issue by a recently-published DHHS regulation setting forth the procedures that "religious" employers might follow to gain exemption from having to provide contraceptive coverage in their sponsored health plans. The proposed rule covers both religious not-for-profits and closely held ...
Our colleague Stuart Gerson of Epstein Becker Green has a new post on the Supreme Court's recent decisions: "Divided Supreme Court Issues Decisions on Harris and Hobby Lobby."
Following is an excerpt:
As expected, the last day of the Supreme Court's term proved to be an incendiary one with the recent spirit of Court unanimity broken by two 5-4 decisions in highly-controversial cases. The media and various interest groups already are reporting the results and, as often is the case in cause-oriented litigation, they are not entirely accurate in their analyses of either opinion.
In ...
Our colleague Stuart Gerson of Epstein Becker Green has a new post on the Supreme Court’s recent decisions: “Divided Supreme Court Issues Decisions on Harris and Hobby Lobby.”
Following is an excerpt:
As expected, the last day of the Supreme Court’s term proved to be an incendiary one with the recent spirit of Court unanimity broken by two 5-4 decisions in highly-controversial cases. The media and various interest groups already are reporting the results and, as often is the case in cause-oriented litigation, they are not entirely accurate in their analyses of either ...
By: Adam C. Abrahms, Kara M. Maciel, Steven M. Swirsky, and Mark M. Trapp
The U.S. Supreme Court today held that the US Senate was not in recess on January 4, 2012, when President Obama made three “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board under the Constitution’s Recess Appointment Clause. In simple terms that means that the recess appointments were not proper and decisions in which the recess appointees participated were not valid.
What this now means is that hundreds of cases decided by the NLRB following the January 4, 2012 recess appointments to the Board ...
By: Amy B. Messigian
In University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, one of two employment-related opinions issued on Monday by the Supreme Court, a narrow majority held that a retaliation claim brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 must be proved according to a strict but for causation standard. Under such a standard, a plaintiff must present proof that “the unlawful retaliation would not have occurred in the absence of the alleged wrongful action or actions of the employer.”
The underlying facts of the Nassar case are somewhat complicated. The ...
Our colleague Julie Saker Schlegel at Epstein Becker Green recently posted “Supreme Court Holds That Only Employees Who Have Authority to Take Tangible Employment Actions Constitute Supervisors for the Purpose of Vicarious Liability Under Title VII” on the Retail Labor and Employment Law blog, and we think health industry employers will be interested.
Following is an excerpt:
In a 5-4 decision the dissent termed “decidedly employer-friendly,” the Supreme Court held on June 24, 2013 that only employees who have been empowered by the employer to take tangible ...
Our colleagues at Epstein Becker Green have issued a client alert: "U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Addresses Availability of State-Action Antitrust Immunity," by Patricia M. Wagner, Ross K. Friedberg, and Daniel C. Fundakowski.
Following is an excerpt:
On February 19, 2013, in FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc., a case that highlights vigorous enforcement activities by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) in the health care arena, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a unanimous opinion (“Opinion”) that overturned a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the ...
by Lynn Shapiro Snyder and Shawn M. Gilman
Speculation abounds with respect to the decision that states will make on the issue of whether to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, now that the Supreme Court of the United States has made the option to abstain a meaningful one. This health reform alert highlights some key factors that may influence a state's decision on whether to implement such an expansion.
Danielle Steele, a Summer Associate (not admitted to the practice of law) in Epstein Becker Green's Washington, DC, office, contributed ...
by Joan A. Disler, Michelle Capezza, and Gretchen Harders
Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld essentially all of the provisions of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), employers are faced with looming deadlines to bring their group health plans into compliance with the ACA’s numerous new requirements. We have prepared for employers a timeline of the highlights of the upcoming deadlines for compliance with the ACA that apply to non-grandfathered group health plans.
Stuart Gerson, a Member of the Firm in the Litigation and Health Care and Life Sciences practices at Epstein Becker Green, authored an article titled "The Supreme Court Has Decided, but Can America Afford the Affordable Care Act?"
Following is an excerpt:
By now, every American who pays any attention to the news is aware that on the last day of its now concluded term, the U.S. Supreme Court, with its June 28 decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, U.S., No. 11-393, 6/28/12, has upheld essentially all of the Obama Administration's Affordable Care Act (ACA ...
On Monday, July 2, 2012, Epstein Becker Green conducted a webinar titled "Decision 2012: What's In, What's Out, and What's Next?" examining the monumental decision (PDF) issued by the Supreme Court of the United States on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
This webinar analyzed the decision and its implications for the states, the health care and life sciences industry, and employers. It also addressed potential congressional activity and the decision's impact on the presidential election.
On Monday, July 2, 2012, Epstein Becker Green conducted a webinar titled "Decision 2012: What's In, What's Out, and What's Next?" examining the monumental decision (PDF) issued by the Supreme Court of the United States on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
This webinar analyzed the decision and its implications for the states, the health care and life sciences industry, and employers. It also addressed potential congressional activity and the decision's impact on the presidential election.
By now, every American who pays any attention to the news is aware that the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld essentially all of the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act. We have posted a copy of the lengthy opinion, concurrence, and dissent on our website. For now, we should be focusing on what the case of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius actually will cause to occur.
By now, every American who pays any attention to the news is aware that the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld essentially all of the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act. We have posted a copy of the lengthy opinion, concurrence, and dissent on our website. For now, we should be focusing on what the case of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius actually will cause to occur.
by Jay Gerzog, Dale Van Demark, Tamar Rosenberg, and Dawn Welch
Is it possible that the U.S. Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) knows something we do not about the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision on PPACA?
Probably not, but that has not stopped the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) from issuing proposed regulations on June 26, 2012, with respect to three of the four new requirements for tax exemption of hospitals imposed by PPACA.
With the adoption of PPACA, Congress took its first concrete step toward toughening the standard for tax exemption in decades ...
The three days of arguments about the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are complete. The Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States have conducted their post-argument conference and are now turning their attention to the drafting and the discussions that will lead to a majority opinion and, likely, several dissents and concurrences. The Court's decision should be issued before the end of June. Health care companies and employers, like the rest of the population, await the ultimate decision. However, there are several ...
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