Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
A district judge in Texas with a long record of extreme rulings against the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and against LGBTQ equality today managed to attack both of them at once, striking down an ACA requirement that insurance policies cover pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which prevents the transmission of the HIV virus.
Judge Reed O’Connor’s asinine and sure-to-be-overturned opinion is peak 2022 Republicanism, striking down a scientifically grounded public health rule on the basis of tendentious, implausible, and simply wrong readings of law, politics, and even religion.
The case in question, Braidwood Management v. Becerra, is the latest brainchild of a latter-day Roy Cohn, Jonathan Mitchell, who also invented the vigilante enforcement mechanism in Texas’ anti-abortion law, back when abortion was still slightly legal in the Lone Star State. (By delegating law enforcement to citizens, Texas Ranger style, that law managed to evade judicial review for several months—though in hindsight, it’s obvious that the Supreme Court knew it would soon be overturning Roe v. Wade entirely.)