Post-Chevron Test Looms in Litigation Over Mental Health Rule

Potential legal challenges against the Biden administration’s new mental health parity rule would further define agencies’ regulatory leeway after the US Supreme Court scrapped a longstanding judicial deference doctrine.

The US Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury departments Sept. 9 finalized a new comparative test for health plans to ensure their mental health benefits are on par with medical and surgical coverage. Any challenge to the rule will play out under the Supreme Court’s June decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned the longstanding Chevron doctrine of deferring to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous laws.

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