A federal court has temporarily blocked the sharing of personal information about Medicaid enrolees with immigration authorities. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction on the 12th, blocking the use of Medicaid enrolee information from 20 states, including New York and New Jersey, for immigration enforcement purposes.
According to the Associated Press, after the Trump administration took office, the Department of Health and Human Services provided the personal information of millions of Medicaid enrolees in four states, including California, to the Department of Homeland Security in June. In July, the Department of Homeland Security and the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) signed an agreement that gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to personal information, including the addresses of 79 million Medicaid enrolees.
In response, 20 Democratic-leaning states sued the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security, claiming that this could “cause tremendous confusion and fear,” and the court issued a preliminary injunction temporarily prohibiting the sharing of Medicaid enrolee personal information with immigration authorities.
Judge Chhabria wrote in the order, “The Department of Health and Human Services has long maintained a policy of using Medicaid enrolee personal information only for the operation of its health care programs and has made this fact public on its website and elsewhere. The administration has a duty to conduct a reasonable decision-making process before changing its policy, but it appears that such a process has not been followed at all.”
The court’s preliminary injunction will remain in effect until 14 days after the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services have completed a reasonable decision-making process in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, or until the lawsuit is resolved.