WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas has struck down Affordable Care Act provisions that require health insurers to provide some free preventive care services.
The ruling could jeopardize coverage nationwide for people relying on preventive services such as screenings for cancer, reproductive health, HIV, hypertension and mental health.
In the decision, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor mentioned his previous ruling on the structure of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which was created under Obamacare and helps determine preventive services coverage, saying it violates the appointments clause of the Constitution and thus its related preventive care mandates are unlawful.
O’Connor also said Obamacare’s requirement to cover drugs preventing HIV, known as PrEP, violates the religious rights of plaintiffs under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit objected to purchasing health insurance that provided coverage for those drugs, the human papillomavirus vaccine, contraceptives, and screenings for sexually transmitted diseases because “coverage for those services violates their religious beliefs by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman,” O’Connor wrote.
In September, the judge said the preventive services requirements were unconstitutional, but he hadn’t decided if that applied only to the plaintiffs, residents of Texas or nationwide. He has now decided it applies nationwide.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
The Biden administration and more than 20 states, mostly controlled by Democrats, had urged O’Connor against a sweeping ruling that would do away with the preventive care coverage requirement entirely.
“Over the last decade, millions of Americans have relied on the preventive services provisions to obtain no-cost preventive care, improving not only their own health and welfare, but public health outcomes more broadly,” the states argued in a court filing.
O’Connor, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, has issued a number of rulings targeting Obamacare in recent years. In 2018, he struck down the 2010 health care law, saying, “The individual mandate can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress’s tax power and is still impermissible under the interstate Commerce Clause — meaning the individual mandate is unconstitutional.”
The Supreme Court, however, ultimately ruled in favor of the law, rejecting GOP efforts to dismantle it.
Associated Press contributed.
