The AHA yesterday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review an Internal Revenue Service rule that excludes medical residents from the Social Security tax exemption for "students," effectively costing teaching hospitals and medical schools an estimated $700 million annually. In an amicus brief filed with the court, the AHA states, "[T]he practical effect of the…regulation is to divert the scarce resources of our country's teaching hospitals and medical schools from their crucial missions of patient care, physician training, and medical research in a manner that Congress did not intend, the same type of diversion that Congress deemed so deleterious in 2004 that it passed special legislation shielding teaching hospitals from antitrust lawsuits challenging the matching process those hospitals used to select residents." A decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the exclusion in Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research v. U.S., a case involving Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, the Mayo Clinic and University of Minnesota, is in stark conflict with decisions of the 2nd, 6th, 7th, and 11th Circuits, all of which hold that teaching hospitals are not categorically prevented from proving that their residents are properly characterized as students, the brief states.