Docket 24-316
Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc.
DecidedJun 27, 2025
6-3decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court upholds Secretary of HHS's authority to appoint Preventive Services Task Force members
Impact8/10
What it does
The Court held that Task Force members are "inferior officers" under the Appointments Clause, not "principal officers" who would require Presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. It further held that Congress, through two statutes read together, has lawfully vested the power to appoint Task Force members in the Secretary of HHS. As a result, the Secretary's appointments of Task Force members since June 2023 are constitutionally valid, and the insurance coverage mandates tied to Task Force recommendations remain enforceable.
Who benefits
People who rely on no-cost preventive healthcare coverage — such as cancer screenings, diabetes screenings, and smoking-cessation treatments — required by the Affordable Care Act based on Task Force recommendations. Health insurers and employers who now have legal clarity about which coverage mandates are enforceable.
Who is affected
Small business owners and individuals who object to being required to provide or purchase insurance coverage for specific preventive services recommended by the Task Force, including the plaintiffs who brought this lawsuit seeking to exclude or impose cost-sharing on certain covered services.
Practical impact
Health insurers and employer-sponsored health plans must continue to cover, without cost-sharing, the preventive services that have received "A" or "B" ratings from the Task Force — a list that includes more than 40 services such as cancer screenings, statin medications, and diabetes screenings. The Secretary of HHS retains authority to appoint Task Force members and, through removal and review powers, to oversee the Task Force's recommendations before they become binding. Plaintiffs like Braidwood Management, who sought to drop or add cost-sharing to certain covered services, do not obtain relief on the Appointments Clause claim (though a separate religious-freedom injunction covering specific HIV-prevention medications for Braidwood remains unaffected by this ruling).
Majority — Kavanaugh
Joined by: Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, Jackson
The majority held that Task Force members are "inferior officers" — meaning officers whose work is supervised and directed by a higher-ranking official — because the Secretary of HHS has two powerful tools of control over them. First, the Secretary can remove Task Force members at will (without needing a specific reason), which the Court said creates a built-in incentive for members to follow the Secretary's direction; historically, officers removable at will by a department head have always been treated as inferior officers. Second, the Secretary has statutory authority to directly review and block Task Force recommendations before they take legal effect, because a minimum one-year waiting period exists between when a recommendation is issued and when insurers must comply, during which the Secretary can use supervisory and rulemaking powers to stop a recommendation from going into effect. The majority reasoned that this two-part control structure — removal plus review — is at least as strong as the supervision found sufficient in prior cases like Edmond v. United States and Free Enterprise Fund, where officers were also deemed inferior. The Court also concluded that Congress lawfully vested appointment authority in the Secretary through two statutes: a 1999 law giving the AHRQ Director power to "convene" the Task Force (which the Court read to include appointing its members), combined with a 1966 Reorganization Plan — ratified by Congress in 1984 — that transferred all functions of Public Health Service officers, including the AHRQ Director, to the Secretary.
Dissent reasoning
The dissent, written by Justice Thomas and joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch, argued that the Court should not have decided the statutory appointment question at all without first sending it back to the lower courts, since no court had yet ruled on it. On the merits, the dissent contended that Congress never clearly gave the Secretary authority to appoint Task Force members, as the Appointments Clause requires. The dissent read the word "convene" in the 1999 statute according to its ordinary meaning — to call a group together for a meeting — which is different from selecting or appointing its members; the dissent noted that elsewhere in the same body of law, Congress consistently used the word "appoint" when it meant to vest appointment authority. The dissent further argued that the 1966 Reorganization Plan cannot transfer the power to appoint the Task Force because that power did not exist in 1966, and because the Reorganization Act itself prohibited plans from authorizing agencies to exercise functions not already authorized by law at the time the plan was issued. The dissent also argued that the Task Force was designed by Congress to be an independent body answering directly to the President — not to the Secretary of HHS — and that the majority's reading distorts Congress's intent by placing the Task Force under secretarial control that Congress never authorized.
Constitutional question
Whether the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — whose recommendations require health insurers to cover certain preventive services at no cost — are "inferior officers" under the Appointments Clause of Article II, and whether Congress has lawfully authorized the Secretary of Health and Human Services to appoint them.