New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin today joined a multistate coalition in filing a lawsuit challenging an unlawful final rule by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that would create significant barriers to obtaining healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and, by their own admission, lead up to 1.8 million residents to lose affordable health insurance.
“Deliberately making it harder for millions of residents to access affordable health insurance is wrong and unlawful, and we will fight it,” said Attorney General Platkin. “As New Jersey and other states prepare for the 2026 open enrollment period, the Trump Administration is seeking to cause confusion and chaos in the healthcare marketplace, increase costs for our state, and create barriers to enrollment—and the Trump Administration even admits that up to almost two million Americans will lose coverage as a result. We are filing suit to reverse this illegal rule and to stand up for affordable healthcare for New Jerseyans.”
The Trump Administration’s final rule would make a range of amendments to the rules governing federal and state health insurance marketplaces, which the administration expressly estimates will cause at least 725,000 people and up to 1.8 million people to lose their health insurance, while causing millions more to pay increased insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs like copays and deductibles.
In the lawsuit, the attorneys general argue that the HHS and CMS rule is arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law, and violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The coalition is also seeking preliminary relief, and a stay, to prevent the challenged portions of the final rule from taking effect in the Plaintiff States before the August 25 effective date.
Congress enacted the ACA in 2010 to increase the number of residents with health insurance and decrease the cost of healthcare. Fifteen years later, the Act continues to meet its goals, with annual enrollment on the ACA marketplace doubling over the past five years, resulting in over 24 million people signing up for health insurance coverage in plan year 2025 on the ACA exchanges and receiving subsidies to make such coverage affordable, including millions of people in the Plaintiff States. Now, with less than four months until open enrollment for plan year 2026 begins, the Trump Administration’s final rule would abruptly reverse that trend, erecting a series of new barriers to enrollment that will deprive up to 1.8 million people of insurance coverage by the administration’s own estimates, and significantly drive up the costs incurred by Plaintiff States in providing healthcare, including increasing state expenditures on Medicaid, uncompensated emergency care, and funding other services provided to newly uninsured residents.
GetCovered New Jersey is the state’s official health insurance marketplace, housed in the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance. Since its inception in 2020, Get Covered New Jersey has transformed New Jersey’s health insurance landscape for consumers in the individual market, ensuring that more New Jerseyans have greater access to quality, affordable health insurance. New Jersey was the first in the nation to open its marketplace with state subsidies that lower premiums for most enrollees. Hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents have signed up for health insurance through Get Covered New Jersey. During the Open Enrollment Period for plan year 2025, a record 513,217 New Jersey residents signed up for health insurance under Get Covered New Jersey, nearly a 30% increase compared to last year, and a 108% increase since the Murphy Administration took over the marketplace’s operations from the federal government in 2020.
The final rule by HHS would make substantial changes and bureaucratic barriers to the operation of the ACA marketplaces, including adding new verification requirements, imposing an automatic monthly charge on all automatically reenrolled consumers who qualify for $0 premiums, shortening the open enrollment period for signing up for health coverage, and making other changes which will make coverage less affordable for millions of individuals nationwide.
The Attorney Generals’ lawsuit explains that the HHS rule is unlawful and would cause significant harm to states and their residents. All of the challenged marketplace changes implemented by the final rule will be harmful to individual consumers and state and local governments. The final rule also imposes burdensome and costly paperwork requirements, limits the opportunities to sign up for health coverage, substantially increases cost-sharing limits, and forces exchanges and consumers to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prove eligibility for coverage and subsidies. These changes will result in direct and immediate costs to States as well as harms tied to decreased enrollment.
This matter was handled by Deputy Attorneys General Joshua Bohn, Monica Finke, Bassam Gergi, Viviana Hanley, Bryce Hurst, Amanda Morejon, Meghan Musso, and Estefania Pugliese-Saville, under the supervision of Assistant Attorney General Mayur Saxena and Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum.
In filing the lawsuit, Attorney General Platkin, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell are joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
