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Joanne Roskey Comments on Potential Legal Hurdles for Mental Health Parity Rule in Bloomberg Law

Subtitle
"Mental Health Rule Poses Fresh Post-Chevron Test for Agencies"

Bloomberg Law

Joanne Roskey, a former Deputy Associate Solicitor at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and former Chief of the Division of Health Investigations in DOL's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), was quoted on the Biden administration's new mental health parity rule, finalized on September 9, which faces potential legal challenges under the Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision, which limited agencies' interpretive rulemaking authority. The rule requires mental health benefits to be in parity with medical and surgical benefits but introduces new compliance standards not explicitly covered by the original 2008 law or amendments to the law in 2020. Roskey suggests the rule could be challenged as exceeding departmental authority or being "arbitrary and capricious" given the Supreme Court's rejection of the Chevron agency deference doctrine in Loper Bright.