{"id":237,"date":"2015-07-26T16:19:05","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T23:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/?p=237"},"modified":"2016-03-01T13:15:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T21:15:16","slug":"administrative-agency-interpretation-the-affordable-care-act-and-erisa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/26\/administrative-agency-interpretation-the-affordable-care-act-and-erisa\/","title":{"rendered":"Administrative Agency Interpretation, the Affordable Care Act, and ERISA"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Joseph A. Garofolo<\/a><\/p>\n

On June 25, 2015, the Supreme Court decided King v. Burwell<\/em>,\u00a0576 U.S.\u00a0____, 192 L. Ed. 2d 483 (2015).\u00a0 The Court held that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “Affordable Care Act”) permits tax credits in states in which the federal government has established health care exchanges.\u00a0 While most of the focus of commentators, understandably, has been on this substantive result,\u00a0King<\/em> is also interesting because of\u00a0the Court’s\u00a0analysis of Chevron<\/em> deference.<\/p>\n

Chevron <\/em>deference\u00a0is the\u00a0principle articulated by the Court in\u00a0Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc<\/em>., 467 U.S. 837 (1984),\u00a0that,\u00a0under certain circumstances, courts\u00a0must defer to reasonable interpretations of agencies when a statute is ambiguous.\u00a0 In King<\/em>, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for\u00a0the Court, explained that\u00a0Chevron<\/em> deference assumes\u00a0that Congress\u00a0implicitly delegated authority to\u00a0an agency to interpret “statutory gaps.”\u00a0 192 L. Ed. 2d at 493 (internal quotations and citation omitted).\u00a0 But, in “extraordinary cases, . . . there may be reasons to hesitate before concluding that Congress has intended such an implicit delegation.”\u00a0Id.<\/em> at 493-94 (internal quotations and citations omitted).\u00a0 With regard to the availability of tax credits in states where exchanges have been established by the federal government,\u00a0if Congress had desired to\u00a0delegate authority to an agency, “it surely would have done so expressly.”\u00a0 Id.<\/em> at 494.\u00a0 Moreover, the Court reasoned that\u00a0Congress would not likely have delegated such an important decision to the Internal Revenue Service because\u00a0of its lack of\u00a0expertise\u00a0regarding\u00a0the subject matter.\u00a0 Accordingly, the Court decided\u00a0King\u00a0<\/em>without any deference to the Internal Revenue Service’s interpretation of the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that the Court has invoked\u00a0what has come to be known as the “major questions doctrine.”\u00a0 See\u00a0<\/em>Adam White, Symposium: Defining deference down<\/a>, SCOTUSblog, June 25, 2015, http:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/2015\/06\/symposium-defining-deference-down\/.\u00a0 And\u00a0although\u00a0the result was necessary in King<\/em>\u00a0to avoid\u00a0the possibility that a\u00a0different administration could change its interpretation of the\u00a0Affordable Care Act, it is also possible that King<\/em> could signal a broader retreat from the Court’s application of Chevron<\/em> deference.\u00a0 See id.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Is this likely to occur\u00a0in the field of ERISA?\u00a0\u00a0There are a number of places in the statute where Congress expressly delegated interpretative authority\u00a0to the\u00a0Secretary of Labor.\u00a0 For example, ERISA \u00a7 503, which addresses the claims procedure that must be provided by employee benefit plans (including retirement and health and welfare\u00a0plans), expressly grants the Secretary\u00a0authority to promulgate a regulation.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps more importantly, ERISA \u00a7 505 grants broad authority to the Secretary to promulgate regulations relating to Title I.\u00a0 Therefore, the major questions doctrine is not likely to\u00a0play a role\u00a0with\u00a0regard to the Secretary’s interpretative authority\u00a0as it pertains to\u00a0most\u00a0significant ERISA issues.<\/p>\n

Finally, one quick note regarding a previous\u00a0post is necessary to close the book for now\u00a0on King<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0The prior post<\/a>\u00a0discussed\u00a0a method of predicting the outcome of Supreme Court cases based on the number of questions asked by the Justices to each side.\u00a0\u00a0This method\u00a0predicted the wrong outcome in King.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>However, in fairness,\u00a0the professor who has been\u00a0collecting data on the method had placed the case in the toss-up category.\u00a0 And Justice Roberts asked only one question.\u00a0 So, from an empirical standpoint,\u00a0the case probably does not tell us much about the ultimate ability of the method to consistently predict the outcome of Supreme Court decisions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joseph A. Garofolo On June 25, 2015, the Supreme Court decided King v. Burwell,\u00a0576 U.S.\u00a0____, 192 L. Ed. 2d 483 (2015).\u00a0 The Court held that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “Affordable Care Act”) permits tax credits in states in which the federal government has established health care exchanges.\u00a0 While most of … <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-jgarofolo","4":"post-237","6":"format-standard","7":"category-erisa-regulations","8":"category-health-plans","9":"category-supreme-court-decisions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erisa-experts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}