Washington, DC – The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral arguments in Gresham v. Azar and Philbrick v. Azar, which concern the Trump administration’s moves authorizing Arkansas and New Hampshire to condition Medicaid coverage on work requirements and other restrictions. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals previously affirmed district court decisions finding that the Department of Health and Human Services’ approval of these projects was arbitrary and capricious and violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
“While we firmly believe that these Petitions did not merit review, we are confident that the Supreme Court will ultimately conclude that these agency actions were not legal,” said Jane Perkins, Legal Director at the National Health Law Program. “The D.C. Circuit, citing decisions from a number of appellate courts and the Supreme Court, as well as the plain text of the statute, rightly concluded that Medicaid’s principal purpose is to provide health care coverage. It then applied garden variety administrative law principles to find that HHS’s action was properly vacated because Secretary Azar failed to account for the significant loss in health coverage that these approvals would produce. Tens of thousands of people would lose their Medicaid coverage and become uninsured.”
