Operating Engineers Trust Fund of Washington, D.C., et al. v. United States

The Affordable Care Act created a transitional “reinsurance” program to subsidize commercial health insurers’ extension of coverage in individual-insurance markets. Congress financed this program in part by requiring group health plans to contribute billions of dollars to it, even though they were ineligible to benefit. Other federal laws require group health plans to hold all of their assets in trust to cover healthcare costs for employees and dependents. Thus, for group health plans like the two petitioners here, the contributions mandated by the ACA came from—and could only come from— assets held in trust by the plans. The petitioners brought this suit to seek just compensation under the Fifth Amendment for the taking of their trust property to finance the reinsurance program. In the decision below, the Federal Circuit—the only circuit with jurisdiction over such claims—held that the plans have no recourse under the Takings Clause. The Federal Circuit reasoned that the ACA did not effectuate a taking of the plans’ private property on the theory that the ACA itself was “indifferent” as to where the plans’ contributions to the reinsurance scheme came from, even though other federal statutes guaranteed that the moneys could only be paid from trust assets. App. 9a. The question presented is: Whether the ACA’s requirement that group health plans contribute billions of dollars to subsidize reinsurance for third parties was a taking of the plans’ private property.