Court lifts CMS freeze on 19,000 new ACA brokers

About 19,000 licensed agents and brokers can now register to sell HealthCare.gov plans for 2027. A federal judge in Maryland stayed CMS’s moratorium on new agent and broker registrations on Nov. 5. The 19,000 figure comes from the National Association of Benefits and Insurance Professionals, and CMS put the number at nearly 19,000, Healthcare Dive reported.

Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher ruled in two cases, one brought by NABIP and one by Health Agents for America (HAFA). The order came four days into open enrollment, which began Nov. 1 and runs to mid-January.

Why it matters: the moratorium shut out every agent who had not registered for 2026. Insurers, brokerages, enrollment platforms and call centers were planning the season without them. That pool is back for the rest of open enrollment.

What the order does

Gallagher found both groups likely to win on their claim under the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice and comment rule, 5 U.S.C. § 553. She found their members likely to suffer irreparable harm without relief. She treated the motions as requests for a stay under 5 U.S.C. § 705 and granted them in part.

The stay covers the interim final rule and the moratorium CMS published at 91 Fed. Reg. 60317 on Sept. 23, 2026. It holds until the court reaches a final decision. The order gave CMS until close of business Nov. 6 to open plan year 2027 training for new agents.

CMS met the deadline. Its registration and training page now says plan year 2027 registration and training is live for new and returning agents and brokers on the Marketplace Learning Management System. New agents, and anyone who skipped 2026 registration, must take the full Individual Marketplace course. Returning agents take a shorter refresher.

Why CMS froze registrations

CMS announced the moratorium in late September as part of its push against fraud, waste and abuse on the exchanges. The agency said new agents and brokers were disproportionately responsible for inappropriate enrollments, Fierce Healthcare reported. It also said it would terminate more than 200 agents and brokers who broke Marketplace standards. We covered those terminations and the senators’ letters to insurers about 760,000 ACA cancellations in October.

NABIP argued CMS skipped the public comment period the law requires. HAFA argued the agency ignored the financial harm to broker businesses. NABIP President Mychal Walker called the ruling “a significant victory for licensed agents and brokers and the consumers who rely on their expertise.” HAFA said “this fight is far from over.”

What comes next

CMS must file a status report within seven days describing how it complied. The two sides must propose a joint schedule for the rest of the case by Nov. 12.

For carriers and agencies, new agent onboarding for 2027 is open again. The stay lasts only until the court’s final ruling, so agency compliance teams should track the Nov. 12 schedule and CMS’s status report.

Our data: our analysis of CMS’s 2027 Plan ID Crosswalk traced the 1,020,968 customers of 10 insurers leaving whole HealthCare.gov states for 2027. By our estimate, CMS will default 403,736 of them to Centene’s Ambetter. Each of those people picks a new plan or takes the default this open enrollment, and many shop through an agent. The full crosswalk analysis has the state detail.

Health and Tech Now analysis of CMS’s 2027 Plan ID Crosswalk and 2025 issuer enrollment by county (estimate), published Nov. 1, 2026.