[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit [official website] on Friday ruled [opinion, PDF] against portions of a Missouri law [text, PDF] which required those providing health plan advice to obtain a license from the state, concluding that the licensing portions of the state law are pre-empted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) [text]. The advocacy groups challenging Missouri’s law, the Health Insurance Marketplace Innovation Act (HIMIA), contended that by enacting such a restrictive law, state lawmakers violated the ACA’s preemption clause which prohibits states from taking actions that would “‘hinder or impede’ implementation of the ACA.” Proponents of the licensing requirement rested their arguments [WSJ report] in favor of the HIMIA on protection of consumers from potential defective advice and identity theft. The court remanded the case to the district court for further development in accordance with its findings in favor of the advocacy groups that challenged the law.

Comprehensive health care reform [JURIST backgrounder] was passed by Congress in March 2010 after over a year of debate, and recent legal challenges have reinvigorated debate. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) [official website] reports [NCSL statistics] that between 2010 and 2015, at least twenty-one states enacted laws attempting to challenge or completely opt out of mandatory provisions of the ACA. In early March the Supreme Court heard [JURIST report] oral arguments for King v. Burwell in which the court was asked to rule on whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) [official website] may adopt regulations to extend tax-credit subsidies to coverage purchased through the federal health insurance exchange established under the ACA. Last June the court ruled [JURIST report] in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby [SCOTUSblog backgrounder] that closely held corporations can deny contraceptive coverage to their employees for religious reasons. Two weeks after the Hobby Lobby decision, US Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Mark Udall (D-CO) introduced a bill [JURIST report] to restore full contraception coverage for employees of closely held corporations.