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A new federal court case could help employer health plans steer enrollees toward the preferred doctors, hospitals and pharmacies.
Justice James Wesley Hendrix last week granted summary judgment to the Healthy Vision Association, a vision plan group that has been fighting a Texas vision plan law. The law is supposed to keep plans from steering the enrollees toward preferred optometrists.
Hendrix agreed with the association that Texas insurance regulators had provided no plausible defense of the law's restrictions on vision plans' freedom of speech.
"The plaintiffs have demonstrated that the law is facially invalid under the First Amendment," Hendrix wrote in an opinion and order concerning the case, Healthy Vision Association et al. v. Cassie Brown.
Hendrix issued a permanent injunction that will keep the state from enforcing the law.
Representatives for Texas officials and the vision plan group could not immediately be reached for comment.
What it means: Many states have tried to keep employer plans from steering the enrollees to specified providers.
If the Healthy Vision ruling survives appeals, it might help plans and insurers fight off other state bans on steering.
Steering: Health insurers have argued that it's natural for them to use ratings, financial incentives and other means to encourage patients to use high-quality, relatively affordable care providers.
Physicians, dentists and many other types of care providers have argued that plan efforts to steer patients toward referred providers are abusive and may help insurers squash providers that compete with their own provider affiliates.
The Texas case: A Texas law prohibits a vision plan from distinguishing between different optometrists based on factors such as the discounts an optometrist offers or the optical goods suppliers the optometrist uses.
The law also prohibits plans from steering enrollees toward plan-owned eyewear shops or toward optometrists in preferred in-network provider tiers.
Vision plans sued Brown — who was the state's insurance commissioner when they filed their complaint — over implementation of the law.
The plans argued that the law violates their freedom of speech by keeping them from telling enrollees about which optometrists offer discounts and giving enrollees other accurate, useful information about optometrists.
State officials said the restrictions can help them prevent fraud.
Hendrix granted a preliminary injunction that kept Texas officials from enforcing the law. Texas officials filed an appeal with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A three-judge panel at the appeals court ruled in May 2025 that the case affected the vision plans' freedom of speech.
The panel let Hendrix keep the injunction in place. It asked Texas officials to explain why restrictions on the plans' ability to give information about optometrists might be justified.
The Hendrix ruling: Hendrix — a judge who was appointed to his seat in 2019 by President Donald Trump — wrote in the new opinion that Texas officials have not provided substantive new arguments defending the state's restrictions on vision plans' communications about optometrists.
"The court finds that no application of the relevant provisions serves a legitimate state interest," Hendrix wrote.
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