❓WHAT HAPPENED: A federal judge appointed under former President Barack Obama issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from sharing Medicaid enrollees’ personal data with immigration officials.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: District Judge Vince Chhabria, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and 20 states that filed a lawsuit.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The ruling was issued earlier this week, affecting Medicaid data-sharing policies in the United States.
💬KEY QUOTE: “Using CMS data for immigration enforcement threatens to significantly disrupt the operation of Medicaid—a program that Congress has deemed critical for the provision of health coverage to the nation’s most vulnerable residents.” – Judge Vince Chhabria
🎯IMPACT: The injunction halts data-sharing until HHS provides a reasoned decision-making process or until litigation concludes, potentially disrupting the detection of many illegal aliens.
District Judge Vince Chhabria, appointed by former President Barack Obama, has issued a preliminary injunction halting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from sharing Medicaid enrollees’ personal data with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The ruling followed a lawsuit by 20 states to end the data-sharing practice.
The injunction bars HHS from providing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with Medicaid data for deportation purposes. Judge Chhabria, whose parents are immigrants from India and Canada, argued that using Medicaid data for immigration enforcement could undermine the program’s critical role for vulnerable populations, stating, “Using CMS data for immigration enforcement threatens to significantly disrupt the operation of Medicaid—a program that Congress has deemed critical for the provision of health coverage to the nation’s most vulnerable residents.”
While noting that DHS collecting data from other agencies is not “categorically unlawful,” Chhabria pointed out that ICE had avoided using Medicaid data for enforcement for over a decade. He complained about the absence, as he saw it, of a reasoned decision-making process for the policy shift, writing, “The record in this case strongly suggests that no such process occurred.”
Introduced under the Trump administration, the data-sharing policy aimed to equip DHS with tools to track migrants. In July, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) agreed to provide DHS daily access to personal data of 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including Social Security numbers and home addresses, without public announcement. HHS insists the policy is legal.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) condemned the policy, stating, “The Trump Administration’s move to use Medicaid data for immigration enforcement upended longstanding policy protections without notice or consideration for the consequences.” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown (D) added, “[E]veryone should be able to seek medical care without fear of what the federal government may do with that information.”
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