In simple terms, “mental health parity” is a federal requirement that employer health plans and insurers cover mental health and substance use disorder care on the same terms as they cover physical health care. That means comparable co-pays and deductibles, but it also means comparable rules behind the scenes, like how strict a prior-authorization process is or how a plan decides which providers count as “in network.” A plan cannot make it noticeably harder to get therapy or addiction treatment covered than it is to get a knee surgery covered. “Compliance” is the ongoing work employers, insurers, and their administrators do to prove, on paper and in practice, that those rules really do match up.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration published two new documents on September 8, 2026, that together reshape how the agency says it will police mental health parity compliance: Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2026-03, which sets out “guiding principles” for enforcing the nonquantitative treatment limitation (NQTL) comparative-analysis requirements of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA), and an updated Self-Compliance Tool plan sponsors and issuers can use to test their own coverage against the law.

The bulletin is an internal EBSA policy memorandum, from Assistant Secretary Daniel Aronowitz to the agency’s enforcement staff, and by its own terms creates no enforceable rights for plans, issuers, or participants. But it is the clearest public signal yet of how EBSA intends to direct its MHPAEA investigations following an 18-month stretch of regulatory limbo, and it follows through on an enforcement priority the agency flagged on January 15, 2026, when it overhauled its national enforcement projects for fiscal year 2026 to include barriers to mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) benefits alongside cybersecurity, surprise billing, and benefit distributions.

Some background explains why EBSA felt the need to clarify things. In September 2024, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury issued a final rule under MHPAEA, as amended by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA), adding new requirements for the NQTL comparative analyses plans and issuers must prepare (the 2024 Final Rule, 89 Fed. Reg. 77,586). Four months later, the ERISA Industry Committee sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing the rule was arbitrary and capricious and exceeded the agencies’ statutory authority. Then came Executive Order 14219, directing agencies to identify and de-prioritize enforcement of regulations seen as imposing outsized compliance burdens (90 Fed. Reg. 10,583). In May 2025, the three Departments responded to both developments with a formal nonenforcement statement, agreeing not to enforce the new provisions of the 2024 Final Rule until the litigation concludes, plus an additional 18 months, while stressing that MHPAEA’s underlying statutory obligations remain fully in effect.

That litigation has since moved further away from the 2024 Final Rule rather than toward defending it. According to a joint status report the Departments and the ERISA Industry Committee filed with the court in late March 2026, the Departments have now decided that, rather than defend the rule as written, they will issue a new proposed rule with anticipated substantial revisions to the challenged provisions, with a notice of proposed rulemaking targeted for no later than December 31, 2026 (see the March 30, 2026 joint status report in ERISA Indus. Comm. v. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., No. 1:25-cv-00136 (D.D.C.)). In the meantime, plans and issuers are left navigating NQTL compliance under the pre-2024 regulatory framework, without a finalized replacement rule.

It is against that backdrop that the new bulletin narrows EBSA’s enforcement focus to three categories the agency says carry the highest potential for participant harm. The first is separate treatment limitations, including blanket exclusions of MH/SUD treatments where comparable medical or surgical treatments are covered; EBSA says it will prioritize wholesale exclusions but may still pursue narrower ones, especially in response to complaints. The second is medical necessity standards and review, with particular attention to prior authorization, concurrent review, and retrospective review; plans may rely on proprietary clinical guidelines, the bulletin notes, but must make them available on request during investigations and to participants. The third is network adequacy, with emphasis on provider admission standards and reimbursement methodologies, on the theory that a thin MH/SUD network pushes participants toward costlier out-of-network care. EBSA says it may still investigate other categories of NQTLs as complaints arise, but these three will get the bulk of its attention.

The companion Self-Compliance Tool, a roughly 40-page document plan sponsors, plan administrators, issuers, and state regulators can use as a self-audit checklist, is required to be updated every two years under Section 13001(a) of the 21st Century Cures Act. This edition walks through MHPAEA’s six benefit classifications, the “substantially all” and “predominant” tests used to evaluate financial requirements and quantitative treatment limits, and a four-step method for analyzing NQTLs: identifying the limitation, the factors behind it, the evidentiary sources for those factors, and whether the whole process is applied comparably to MH/SUD and medical/surgical benefits, both on paper and in practice. It also folds in DOL’s existing guidance on medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder and eating-disorder benefits, both of which the tool says remain subject to MHPAEA’s parity requirements notwithstanding the rulemaking uncertainty.

For insurers and self-funded plans specifically, the tool’s most operationally significant addition may be Appendix II, a framework for benchmarking provider reimbursement rates against Medicare as a way of self-testing network-related NQTLs before DOL auditors do it for them. The tool flags, as possible warning signs warranting further review, MH/SUD reimbursement rates set at or near Medicare levels while medical/surgical rates run well above Medicare, and psychiatrists reimbursed less than other physicians for identical evaluation-and-management billing codes. The tool is explicit that outcomes and denial-rate disparities are not, by themselves, proof of a violation, but it treats them as red flags that can trigger closer scrutiny of the underlying process. The Self-Compliance Tool also complements benchmarking resources the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has developed for state regulators and issuers.

Employee-benefits practitioners who reviewed the bulletin in the days after its release were, by and large, measured about how much it actually changes. One law firm client alert characterized the bulletin as reaffirming existing enforcement priorities rather than establishing new compliance standards, and separately noted that neither the bulletin nor the tool fills the gap left by the 2025 nonenforcement policy on what a compliant NQTL comparative analysis must contain, since a new final rule remains pending. For employers and issuers, the practical takeaway is that while the 2024 Final Rule’s new provisions remain unenforced pending litigation and rulemaking, MHPAEA’s statutory NQTL comparative-analysis obligations under the CAA are still live and enforceable, and EBSA has now told the regulated community, in some detail, where it plans to look first.

This summary is for general informational purposes only. Readers should consult the full Field Assistance Bulletin and Self-Compliance Tool, and the underlying rules and court filings linked above, for complete details and methodology and consult with legal counsel before making compliance decisions.

A key organizer of a $36 million transnational fraud ring that posed as attorneys to swindle elderly Americans out of timeshare “settlement” money pleaded guilty September 14 to conspiracy to commit money laundering, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California announced. Juliet Mora, 42, formerly of Hayward, California and now living in Nicaragua, admitted to helping run a scheme that stole from more than 400 mostly elderly American victims.

According to court documents, members of the organization posed as attorneys and contacted elderly timeshare owners and past fraud victims, telling them they were entitled to restitution or settlement payments. Believing they were dealing with real lawyers, victims signed fake representation agreements and bogus non-disclosure agreements, then paid fees and wired money to shell companies the organization’s U.S.-based members controlled. Members allegedly evaded banks’ anti-money-laundering safeguards by misrepresenting what the transactions were for, repeatedly closing and reopening accounts flagged for suspicious activity.

Mora joined the scheme in August 2021, prosecutors said, maintaining shell companies that took in more than $1.5 million in victim funds; investigators traced roughly $2.7 million in stolen funds to accounts she controlled. She later relocated to Nicaragua and became an organizer, directing U.S.-based co-conspirators on receiving and moving victim money, setting up shell companies, and preparing fraudulent legal paperwork, and used fake paralegal identities to communicate with victims directly. She was arrested in December 2025 after arriving at Boston Logan International Airport on a flight from Panama, on a second superseding indictment. She faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 or twice the amount laundered, whichever is greater, when sentenced December 14 by U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston.

The plea is the latest development in a case that has played out across several countries over the past year. The scheme first became public in October 2025, when the Eastern District’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, in a case federal investigators dubbed “Operation Silver Shores,” announced the indictment of more than 20 people and the arrest of 15 defendants across California, Texas, and Florida. At that point, investigators had identified at least 372 victims and losses exceeding $30 million, with more than $1.5 million in victim funds seized. FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel said at the time that some of the arrested defendants were tied to Norteño-affiliated gang members moving into organized financial crime; local reporting on the arrests, including by the San Joaquin Valley Sun, named several Central Valley defendants taken into custody that day.

Both the September plea agreement and the original indictment describe the fraud’s reach extending well beyond U.S. borders. Investigators say the organization operated “out of the United States and several countries in Latin America.” According to Tuesday’s release, Nicaraguan authorities, coordinating with the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, arrested one of the case’s central figures, Marlon Solis Bonilla, in July 2025 and transferred him to FBI custody in Houston. And in August 2026, Mexican authorities arrested three more defendants, Julian Jauregui, Sergio Jauregui, and Eduardo Navarro, in Guadalajara, an operation the release credits to the FBI’s legal attaché office in Mexico City working with the U.S. Marshals Service and Jalisco state security forces; all three were processed by Mexican immigration authorities and removed to the United States. Mexican outlet Crónica separately reported that Jalisco’s cybercrime police, working from a U.S. Marshals tip, captured three men with the same first names in coordinated raids in Guadalajara and Zapopan in early September, describing the outstanding October 2025 California warrants as involving cryptocurrency-related wire fraud and money laundering — a somewhat different characterization of the underlying conduct than the elderly-timeshare fraud described in the DOJ release, which readers should note. Three defendants in the case remain at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The case adds to a rapidly growing list of federal actions this year against transnational networks that use fake attorneys and phony government officials to target elderly Americans, particularly former timeshare owners. In August 2026, the Justice Department and FBI announced a much larger set of indictments against leaders of Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), accusing cartel-linked call centers of defrauding more than 6,000 Americans out of roughly $400 million between 2019 and 2023 through fake timeshare resale and settlement schemes, according to Fox News‘ coverage of the announcement. FBI Director Kash Patel said at that press conference that the bureau had carried out more than 30 international transfers of custody across 15 countries in July 2026 alone as part of its broader elder-fraud enforcement push. There is no indication in the available court filings or press materials that the CJNG-linked case and the Mora/Operation Silver Shores case are the same organization, but both illustrate a pattern federal officials say has become common: elder-fraud networks that blend U.S.-based money-laundering cells with leadership and call-center operations based in Mexico and Central America.

The Mora investigation was conducted by the FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the Bakersfield Police Department, with assistance from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Truckee Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cody S. Chapple and Arelis M. Clemente are prosecuting the case.

In 2020, a social-media trend nicknamed the “Kia Boyz” popularized a method for stealing certain Hyundai and Kia vehicles in seconds, by exploiting the fact that many of those vehicles lacked an engine immobilizer, a standard anti-theft device. Thefts of Hyundai and Kia vehicles surged nationwide. Lawsuits filed across the country were consolidated into a multidistrict litigation in the Central District of California, organized into three tracks: subrogation claims, consumer claims, and claims by governmental entities. This appeal concerns the subrogation track, brought by roughly 200 insurance companies that paid claims to policyholders whose Hyundai or Kia vehicles, model years 2011 through 2022, were stolen or damaged.

The insurers sued not only the U.S. distributors, Hyundai Motor America and Kia America, but also the Korean parent manufacturers, Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) and Kia Corporation (KC). They alleged the Korean entities designed standard-model vehicles without engine immobilizers specifically for the U.S. market — reserving that anti-theft feature for higher trim packages — even though the same models sold with immobilizers standard in Canada and other markets. Plaintiffs also alleged the Korean entities shipped thousands of vehicles through California’s ports: more than 70 percent of HMC’s U.S.-bound shipments and about 77 percent of KC’s, according to bills of lading plaintiffs submitted.

The Korean entities moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, submitting declarations from their American subsidiaries’ sales executives stating that vehicles are sold “FOB Origin” in Korea — meaning title and risk of loss pass to the American subsidiaries at the point of shipment — and that the subsidiaries, not the Korean entities, handle importation, port logistics, and distribution once the vehicles reach the United States. Plaintiffs did not submit any competing declarations of their own, relying instead on their complaint’s allegations. The district court (Judge James V. Selna) dismissed the claims against the Korean entities, concluding the shipping records did not show the Korean entities intentionally aimed their conduct at California and that, in any event, plaintiffs had not shown their claims arose from California-related conduct. The court also denied plaintiffs leave to amend and denied their request for jurisdictional discovery, then entered a Rule 54(b) final judgment dismissing the Korean entities from the subrogation track.

In the published case of In re: Kia Hyundai Vehicle Theft Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation: Insurance Subrogation Appeal, No. 24-5219 (9th Cir. Sept. 2026). The Ninth Circuit reversed the dismissal and remanded for further proceedings.

The panel first held the district court properly disregarded plaintiffs’ complaint allegations that the Korean entities controlled U.S. distribution, since those allegations were directly contradicted by the subsidiaries’ declarations and plaintiffs offered no competing evidence of their own. Turning to the merits, the panel applied the Ninth Circuit’s three-part test for specific personal jurisdiction over non-resident defendants, tracing its due-process roots to International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945): the defendant must have purposefully directed activities at, or availed itself of, the forum; the claims must arise out of or relate to those forum contacts; and the exercise of jurisdiction must be reasonable.

On the first element, the panel held the Korean entities’ contacts were not the kind of passive “stream of commerce” placement that the Supreme Court held insufficient in Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, 480 U.S. 102 (1987). Even though the Korean entities did not themselves sell vehicles in California, they were listed as shippers of record on thousands of shipments routed through California ports, and nothing in the record suggested a distributor independently chose that routing. Combined with evidence the Korean entities designed their vehicles without immobilizers specifically for the U.S. market, the panel found this sufficient “purposeful availment and direction,” rejecting the Korean entities’ argument that only California-specific (as opposed to nationwide) targeting could support jurisdiction. The panel relied heavily on its own 2025 en banc decision in Briskin v. Shopify, Inc., 135 F.4th 739 (9th Cir. 2025), which held that “differential targeting” of a particular state is not required, and on the Supreme Court’s decision in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, 592 U.S. 351 (2021), which held that serving a nationwide market does not immunize a company from jurisdiction in any particular state where its products cause injury.

On the second element, the panel held plaintiffs’ claims arose from the Korean entities’ California contacts because their injuries were caused by vehicles the Korean entities shipped through California’s ports. The panel distinguished its earlier decision in Yamashita v. LG Chem, Ltd., 62 F.4th 496 (9th Cir. 2023), where a plaintiff failed to allege that the specific battery that injured him had been shipped through the forum port; here, given that the large majority of the Korean entities’ U.S. shipments passed through California, it was reasonable to infer many of the vehicles at issue did too.

The panel left the third element — whether exercising jurisdiction would ultimately be “reasonable,” a multi-factor test neither party had briefed on appeal — for the district court to resolve on remand, and did not reach whether the court abused its discretion in denying jurisdictional discovery.