Delaware AG Jennings Leads Coalition Lawsuit to Halt ACA Coverage Cuts

Twenty state attorneys general and one governor just drew a line. Delaware's Kathy Jennings filed suit this week alongside a coalition of nineteen AGs and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, according to the state's announcement, to block a federal rule that HHS itself estimates will strip health coverage from two million Americans in 2027 and five million by 2030. The target: the Department of Health and Human Services' 2027 Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters — a rule that, by design, would make insurance more expensive and harder to obtain for the people who need it most. This is not a policy disagreement. It is a structural extraction, a deliberate transfer of risk from the federal balance sheet onto sick people, working families, and already-strained state Medicaid systems.

What the rule actually does

The 2027 Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters expands eligibility for catastrophic health insurance plans — plans that are ineligible for premium tax credits, offer only limited coverage, and leave consumers exposed to out-of-pocket costs far higher than standard ACA plans. It also allows catastrophic and bronze plans to exceed ACA limits on maximum annual out-of-pocket costs, and attempts to reinstate several provisions that a federal court found unlawful just last month. The coalition had opposed these exact provisions in a March 2026 comment letter. The administration ignored them. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is the next logical step.

The material stakes

More than 23 million Americans currently receive coverage through ACA marketplaces. HHS's own projection — two million people losing coverage in 2027, five million by 2030 — is not a side effect of the rule. It is the rule's function. When a federal agency quantifies the human cost of its own policy and proceeds anyway, that is not deregulation. That is a choice architecture engineered to push the uninsured off the rolls and the underinsured into medical debt. A federal court last month already vacated several provisions of the administration's 2025 rule under the Administrative Procedure Act. This new rule reimports those provisions and adds more. Twenty state chief legal officers are now saying: no.

What to watch

The case in the Northern District of California is the active fight. A parallel challenge to the 2025 Marketplace rule is awaiting summary judgment in the District of Massachusetts. Both will test whether the executive branch can bypass Congress and rewrite the ACA through annual rulemaking. Watch the coalition list — California, New Jersey, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, plus Delaware and Pennsylvania — and note who is absent. The states suing are doing what the federal executive refuses to do: enforce the law as written. If you buy insurance through the marketplace, the 2027 plan year is the timeline that matters. If your state is not in this coalition, contact your attorney general and ask why.