MASSACHUSETTS CANNOT bar legal immigrants from a state healthcare programme, according to a ruling issued this week by the state’s highest court. The decision edges the state closer to its goal of providing near-universal healthcare coverage to its residents.
The ruling said that a 2009 state budget that dropped about 29,000 legal immigrants from Commonwealth Care, a subsidised health insurance programme central to the state’s 2006 healthcare overhaul, violated the state constitution. “This appropriation discriminated on the basis of alienage and national origin,” wrote Justice Robert J Cordy of the supreme judicial court, ruling that the action “violates their rights to equal protection under the Massachusetts Constitution”.
The immigrants in question were legal residents who had lived in the US for less than five years. In 2009, with Massachusetts in the grips of a budget crisis, the state legislature voted to eliminate these immigrants’ eligibility for the programme, a move lawmakers said then would save about $130 million. “Fiscal considerations alone cannot justify a state’s invidious discrimination against aliens,” the judge wrote.
He also dismissed the state’s argument that the cuts were in line with federal policies to deny Medicaid assistance to the same group of legal immigrants. “The legislature may not lean on federal policy as a crutch to absolve it of examining whether its own invidious discrimination is truly necessary,” he wrote.
Gov Deval Patrick initially opposed barring the immigrants’ from the programme and worked with legislators to create an alternative – and more limited – programme that cost about $40 million.
Wendy E Parmet, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law who argued the case, said she hoped the ruling would mean a quick redemption of benefits for the immigrants who lost some or all of their health insurance coverage because of the measure. “I think it sends a clear message that it is unconstitutional in the state of Massachusetts, that the state can’t deal with its budget problems on the backs of the legal immigrants,” Prof Parmet said of the decision.
State officials say they will abide by the decision, although they are not yet sure how to pay for the change.“This decision has significant fiscal impacts for the commonwealth, adding somewhere in the range of $150 million in annual costs to what is already a very challenging budget,” said Jay Gonzalez, secretary of administration and finance.
But he added, “We will work expeditiously to identify the resources required and the operational steps that need to be taken to integrate all eligible, legal immigrants into the Commonwealth Care programme in accordance with today’s decision.”