The Ninth Circuit’s decision to uphold San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance got everyone wondering if the Golden Gate Restaurant Association will take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.
GGRA’s executive director Kevin Westly told me they might, or they might ask the Ninth Circuit to do an en banque review, instead, which involves all eleven Ninth Circuit judges.
“Healthy San Francisco is a good program and employer spending mandates are a separate issue,” Westly said, repeating a position that Mayor Gavin Newsom used to share, back when Sup. Tom Ammiano, who authored this trailbreaking legislation, was trying to explain that it’s not fiscally possible to provide uninsured residents with free access to the City’s health clinics without the employer mandate , since the mandate generates the funding for the free access program.
Newsom eventually climbed on board, ( “kicking and screaming” as Ammiano recently recalled), but GGRA continues to hold that the mandate is a major fiscal and administrative burden that employers shouldn’t bear. GGRA makes that argument based on their interpretation of Congress’s intent in 1974, when it passed ERISA.