Insights

Washington – April 30, 2026: Crowell & Moring hosted its 27th annual George Bailey Public Service Awards ceremony this month, named after the hero of the classic movie, "It's a Wonderful Life." The awards recognize the firm's lawyers and staff who have made a substantial impact on the lives of others through their pro bono efforts. 

As pharmaceutical weight-loss therapies have surged in popularity, health plans, regulators, and courts have found themselves grappling with a set of increasingly pressing and complex questions: who must cover these drugs, under what circumstances, and for whom?

On March 13, a Massachusetts federal district court temporarily blocked the Trump Administration from requiring higher education institutions to respond to the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (“ACTS”) survey — a new data collection effort mandating that institutions disclose detailed admissions information regarding students’ race and sex to the federal government. In Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Department of Education, 1:26-cv-11229 (D. Mass.), the court extended the deadline for institutions to respond to the survey from March 18th to March 25th to allow time to consider the case.

The Department of Education (DOE) announced on September 10, 2025, that it will end discretionary funding to several Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) grant programs that, it stated, “discriminate by conferring government benefits exclusively to institutions that meet racial or ethnic quotas.”[1] The agency stated that it would “us[e] its statutory authority to reprogram discretionary funds to programs that do not present such concerns.”[2] This announcement follows a July 2025 decision by the Department of Justice to no longer defend the constitutionality of a provision of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) that authorizes grant funding to Hispanic-Serving institutions, after determining that such programs “violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”[3]