On May 16, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted the parties’ Joint Motion for Remand to vacate the Court’s injunction on HHS’s cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments. The Joint Motion for Remand flows from the parties’ conditional settlement reached in December 2017, and as explained by the parties, the remand and vacatur would “obviate the need for the courts to decide a dispute between the political branches that those branches are now prepared to resolve amicably.”
Based on the terms of the settlement agreement filed with the Court, it does not appear that CSR payments will be reinstated, but it is clear that the District Court’s injunction will have no binding precedential value on pending or future cases. “[T]he Parties agree that the district court’s holding on the merits should not in any way control the resolution of the same or similar issues should they arise in other litigation, and hereby waive any right to argue that the judgment of the district court or any of the district court’s orders or opinions in this case have any preclusive effect in any other litigation.” A copy of the Joint Motion for Remand can be found here. A copy of the D.C. Court of Appeal’s Order granting remand can be found here.
This suit arose because of CSR payments made by HHS and the U.S. Department of the Treasury under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). CSR payments are subsidy payments made to insurance companies to help offset the...
