A federal judge in Pennsylvania, Wendy Beetlestone, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from implementing rules that would have overturned Obamacare’s Health and Human Services mandate, which requires that nearly all insurance plans must cover abortion-inducing drugs and contraception.

Pennsylvania alleges that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act by issuing the rules as “interim final rules” (meaning they went into effect immediately) rather than promulgating through the notice-and-comment process and that the rules were “arbitrary, capricious, or not in accordance with law.”

To justify issuing the rules as interim final rules, the administration explained that it met the Procedure Act’s “good cause” exception because additional delay was contrary to public interest, that the rules would help resolve ongoing litigation surrounding the HHS mandate, and that agencies have already received a significant number of comments on this issue during multiple rounds of rule-making in previous years.

However, the judge agreed with Pennsylvania and held that the administration did not provide adequate justification to use the Administrative Procedure Act’s good cause exemption.

Read the full article on the mandate exemption by Melanie Israel and Elizabeth Slattery at The Heritage Foundation