Veteran U.S. Supreme Court lawyer Paul Clement has taken another case to the high court on behalf of Oklahoma, this time in defense of the state’s “modest” regulations of “self-dealing” drug store middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers.

In a petition for certiorari filed this month, Clement has asked the justices to review a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit decision that federal law preempts a 2019 Oklahoma statute regulating PBM business practices. That decision followed a court challenge to the law filed by the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, a trade group representing PBMs.

“We are optimistic the high court will grant certiorari in this case, as we believe the 10th Circuit clearly erred in contending that ERISA preempts the right of Oklahoma to regulate PBMs,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a written statement to the National Law Journal.  “The Oklahoma Patient’s Right to Pharmacy Choice Act is important to our state and I look forward to the opportunity to defend it in the wake of the 10th Circuit’s incorrect decision.”