By Emily Brill

Law360 (April 16, 2020, 8:35 PM EDT) -- Since the coronavirus pandemic canceled the U.S. Supreme Court's April term, the high court has been gradually rescheduling the arguments it had planned to hear over the next few weeks — including those in two high-profile benefits and health care law cases.

Attorneys watching the case that could reduce affordable birth control access won't have to wait long to see the next step in the litigation: On Wednesday, the high court rescheduled oral arguments from April 29 to May 6.

Those watching litigation that could limit states' ability to keep prescription drug costs low will have to be more patient. On Monday, the high court pushed arguments in that case from April 27 to sometime in October.

The two blockbuster cases involve questions of law under the Affordable Care Act and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

In the case justices will hear May 6, Trump v. Pennsylvania , Pennsylvania and New Jersey challenged two regulations issued by the Trump administration in 2018 that weakened an Affordable Care Act requirement for employee health plans to fully cover workers' birth control.

The regulations would have exempted employers who oppose birth control on moral or religious grounds from complying with the requirement.

In early 2019, a Pennsylvania federal judge blocked the regulations from going into effect nationwide, saying the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury exceeded the scope of their authority under the ACA by issuing them.

If Congress wanted to give employers broad leeway to opt out of the birth control mandate for moral or religious reasons, it would have done so, the court wrote.

In July, the Third Circuit upheld the judge's injunction. The Trump administration asked the high court to take up the case in October, and the justices agreed to do so in January.

The case has attracted a huge amount of attention, most recently from a slew of federal lawmakers, cities, states and interest groups that oppose the regulations. The opponents say the regulations would harm public health by limiting access to affordable birth control.

Proponents, like Republican politicians and a group of red states, say the regulations are necessary to protect employers who feel that covering birth control would violate their religion.

The second benefits case on the Supreme Court's docket, now set to be heard during the October term, is Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association .

The case asks the Supreme Court to decide whether Arkansas was allowed to pass a law regulating the rates at which companies called pharmacy benefit managers — or PBMs — reimburse pharmacies for prescription drugs.

Critics of PBMs, which manage health insurance plans' relationships with pharmacies, say they're pushing independent pharmacies out of business through predatory reimbursement practices that drive up drug costs for consumers who don't pick up their drugs from large retail pharmacies.

Those critics — which include pharmacy groups and a coalition of 46 attorneys general — say Arkansas was within its rights to pass a law that purported to protect independent pharmacies from unfair treatment by PBMs.

But supporters of PBMs, which include business and insurance trade groups, say Arkansas' Act 900 violated ERISA. Congress intended ERISA to be the only law that regulates benefit plans' dealings, they say, so Arkansas' law cannot stand.

In 2017, an Arkansas federal judge agreed with the law's challengers and struck down Act 900. The Eighth Circuit upheld the lower court's decision in June 2018, and Arkansas petitioned the Supreme Court for review in October 2018. The high court picked up the case in January.

--Editing by Adam LoBelia.

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