The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the current structure and appointment of the body within the Department of Health and Human Services that determines what preventive care measures must be covered by insurance under Obamacare.

In a 6-3 vote, the majority found in the case Kennedy v. Braidwood Management that the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are “inferior officers” under the appointments clause of the Constitution, meaning that they do not need to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, to which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonja Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

The case was widely seen as an opportunity for the Trump administration to follow through on a portion of the Republican Party’s long-term goal of repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Braidwood Management, a Texas-based, Christian-owned business, challenged the USPSTF’s authority by arguing that task force members ought to be considered “primary officers” under the appointments clause of the Constitution.

That means that they would need to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. In the current system, they are appointed by the secretary of health and human services.

Preventive care mandates have been one of the most controversial elements of the Affordable Care Act, requiring private health insurance plans to cover a range of preventive services without cost-sharing.

Since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, the USPSTF has implemented 10 different preventive service mandates, ranging from cancers, perinatal depression, preeclampsia, and HIV prevention.

A study published in April in the Journal of the American Medical Association Health Forum found that about 30% of privately insured people, including half of all privately insured women, use at least one of the 10 preventive services mandated by the task force since 2010.

During oral arguments, liberal and conservative Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of the challenger’s argument that the USPSTF functioned as an independent agency, citing that the 16 members of the panel serve “at-will” of the HHS secretary.

Kagan, during oral arguments, sparked laughter from the audience when she forcefully pushed back against the assertion that the USPSTF is an independent agency.

“More often we destroy independent agencies,” Kagan said. “The idea that we would take a statute which doesn’t set up an independent agency and declare it one strikes me as pretty inconsistent with everything that we’ve done in this area.”

This is a developing story.