Amicus Briefs

Through the Health Legal Scholars Initiative, the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program connects health law and policy scholarship with the courts, bringing expert perspectives to important cases affecting health care access, public programs, and health equity.

Medicaid

Rose v. Kennedy *

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, 2025

Was the HHS Secretary’s decision to allow Indiana to continue restricting Medicaid eligibility under its Section 1115 demonstration waiver arbitrary?

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Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (formerly Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic) *

Supreme Court, 2025

Do Medicaid enrollees have a legally enforceable right to obtain covered family planning services from their provider of choice?

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Chianne D v. Weida *

District Court, 2024

Do Florida’s Medicaid termination notices violate enrollees’ constitutional due process rights?

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Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski *

Supreme Court, 2022

Can Medicaid enrollees seek relief from federal courts when state officials violate their federal right to be free of abuse and neglect in nursing homes?

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Becerra v. Gresham (formerly Cochran v. Azar; formerly Gresham v. Azar)

Supreme Court, 2021 (combined with Philbrick v. Azar); D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, 2020 (combined with Stewart v. Azar); District Court, 2019

Was the HHS Secretary’s approval of Arkansas’s Section 1115 demonstration waiver, which conditioned Medicaid eligibility on meeting a work reporting requirement, arbitrary and capricious?

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Philbrick v. Azar

Supreme Court, 2021 (combined with Becerra v. Gresham); District Court, 2019

Was the HHS Secretary’s approval of New Hampshire’s Section 1115 demonstration waiver, which conditioned Medicaid eligibility on meeting a work reporting requirement, arbitrary and capricious?

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Rivera v. Kent

California Supreme Court, 2020

Does California have a mandatory duty to perform Medicaid eligibility determinations for all applications within 45 days of completion?

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Stewart v. Azar

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, 2019 (combined with Becerra v. Gresham); District Court, 2018

Was the HHS Secretary’s approval of Kentucky’s Section 1115 demonstration waiver, which conditioned Medicaid eligibility on meeting a work reporting requirement, arbitrary and capricious?

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National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius; Florida v. HHS *

Supreme Court, 2012

Does the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion violate Congress’s Spending Clause power?

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Reproductive Health

Danco Laboratories, LLC v. Louisiana et al. / GenBioPro, Inc. v. Louisiana et al. *^

Supreme Court, 2026

Does the FDA’s 2023 action revising the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for mifepristone, including allowing prescribing via telehealth, violate the Administrative Procedure Act?

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Moyle v. US; Idaho v. US *

9th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2024; Supreme Court, 2024

Is Idaho’s state law prohibiting abortion preempted by the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospital emergency departments to provide abortion care when necessary to stabilize an emergency medical condition that seriously threatens a pregnant person’s health?

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Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health

Supreme Court, 2021

Are all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions unconstitutional?

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Oregon v. Azar; AMA v. Azar

9th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2019

Should HHS’s rule preventing healthcare providers at federally funded Title X family planning clinics from referring patients for abortions be temporarily blocked from taking effect while lawsuits challenging the rule are pending?

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Affordable Care Act

Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc. (formerly Braidwood Management, Inc. v. Becerra; formerly Kelley v. Becerra) *

Supreme Court, 2025; 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2023; District Court, 2022

Is the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurers provide cost-free coverage of preventive services constitutional?

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California v. Texas

Supreme Court, 2020

Do Texas and individual plaintiffs have standing to challenge the Affordable Care Act? If so, did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act render the individual mandate unconstitutional? If the individual mandate is unconstitutional, is it severable from the remainder of the ACA?

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King v. Burwell

Supreme Court, 2015

Does the IRS have authority to issue a regulation that makes Affordable Care Act premium subsidies available in states with a federally run Marketplace?

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Public Benefits & Immigration

State of New York et al. v. U.S. Department of Justice et al. *^

District Court for the District of Rhode Island, 2026

Do federal agencies’ changes to longstanding interpretations of the “public benefits” subject to PRWORA’s restrictions on immigrants’ access violate the APA and the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution?

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CASA de Maryland v. Trump

4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2021

Should the Trump Administration’s public charge rule be temporarily blocked from taking effect while lawsuits challenging the rule are pending?

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New York v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security

2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, 2021

Should the Trump Administration’s public charge rule be temporarily blocked from taking effect while lawsuits challenging the rule are pending?

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Vaccines, Emergency Powers & Agency Authority

American Academy of Pediatrics et al. v. Kennedy et al. *^

District Court for the District of Massachusetts, 2025; 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, 2026

Whether actions taken by the Health and Human Services Secretary changing policies related to immunizations for children and pregnant women violate the Administrative Procedure Act?

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National Federation of Independent Business v. Dept. of Labor (formerly In Re OSHA Rule)

Supreme Court, 2021; 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2021

Should OSHA be permitted to enforce its emergency temporary standard requiring large employers to have employees either receive the COVID-19 vaccine or comply with enhanced safety measures while lawsuits challenging the rule are pending?

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Biden v. Missouri; Becerra v. Louisiana

Supreme Court, 2021

Should HHS’s rule requiring healthcare workers at facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid to receive the COVID-19 vaccine be allowed to take effect pending a final decision in a lawsuit challenging the rule?

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Funding Acknowledgement

* Indicates public comments supported by the Commonwealth Fund, a national, private foundation in New York City that supports independent research on health care issues and makes grants to improve health care practice and policy. The views presented here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Commonwealth Fund, its directors, officers, or staff.

^ Indicates support for this program is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.