Washington, D.C., February 20, 2025 – The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) has asked for a stay of enforcement of the September 2024 Final Rule under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (the Final Rule) while ERIC’s lawsuit challenging the validity of the Final Rule is pending. In a February 14th letter to the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury (the Tri-Departments), former Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia requested that the Tri-Departments postpone the effective date of the Final Rule while litigation regarding its legality is pending, effectively staying enforcement of the Final Rule. Scalia and his colleagues at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP represent ERIC in this matter. An ERIC statement can be found below and is attributable to Tom Christina, Executive Director of the ERIC Legal Center.
“ERIC and stakeholders across the employer and behavioral health community long cautioned that the Biden Administration’s Mental Health Parity Rule could create unintended and adverse consequences. Now that portions of the Final Rule have gone into effect, those consequences threaten to raise costs and jeopardize patients’ access to safe, effective, and medically necessary mental health support. Taking action to stay the Mental Health Parity Rule provides needed certainty to all parties as the suit works its way through the judicial process.”
The full text of the letter can be found here.