Sarah Raaii discusses EBSA's new mental health parity guidance with Law360

In a recent Law360 article, Sarah Raaii discusses the Department of Labor’s new field assistance bulletin on mental health parity enforcement, which narrows EBSA’s compliance focus to three areas: blanket exclusions on behavioral healthcare coverage, medical necessity standards, and network adequacy.

Sarah noted that the guidance, paired with the agency’s 2025 nonenforcement stance on the 2024 parity rules, highlights a confusing dynamic for plan sponsors — even without those rules in effect, the underlying parity compliance obligation hasn’t gone away.