Nearly two years after filing a class-action lawsuit alleging Florida did not provide adequate notices when dropping people from the Medicaid program, plaintiffs are seeking to revise the lawsuit because of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said in a motion filed Tuesday in federal court that the revisions won't affect the underlying issues in the lawsuit. But the request is another twist in a dispute rooted in a state process to determine whether people remained eligible for Medicaid coverage after the 2023 end of a federal COVID-19 public health emergency.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard finished a trial in the case in August 2024 but has not issued a ruling. The lawsuit was filed in August 2023.
The motion filed Tuesday would effectively scale back the lawsuit so that it would allege a violation of Medicaid beneficiaries' constitutional due-process rights.
It would do away with a claim that Florida's actions have violated part of a federal Medicaid law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 26 in an unrelated case that individual beneficiaries could not pursue such legal claims against state officials for alleged violations of the Medicaid law.
After the U.S. Supreme Court opinion, Howard ordered attorneys for the plaintiffs and the state to file briefs about how it could affect the Florida case. That ultimately resulted in the motion and a proposed amended lawsuit filed Tuesday.
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The motion said the "plaintiffs — with defendants' consent — move to amend so that the final issues to be decided in this matter can be streamlined, ultimately preserving judicial resources that would otherwise be necessary to contend with the impact of Medina (the U.S. Supreme Court ruling) on the case at hand." It also said the due-process and Medicaid law issues are similar.
"Because the claims are substantially similar, the evidence plaintiffs presented at trial is inextricably linked to both claims," the motion said. "Similarly, the relief that plaintiffs request flows equally from both claims, such that eliminating the Medicaid Act claim does not alter the relief requested on behalf of the class."
The lawsuit stems from a process that the state started in spring 2023 to determine whether millions of people enrolled in Medicaid remained eligible for benefits. The process came after a three-year period when the state effectively could not drop people from Medicaid amid the COVID-19 public health emergency.
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The plaintiffs have argued, in part, that notices sent to beneficiaries by the state about discontinuation of coverage did not provide adequate information that could be used to contest the decisions. The state has disputed the allegations.
In the proposed amended lawsuit filed Tuesday, the plaintiffs argued for a requirement "to prospectively reinstate Medicaid coverage to plaintiffs and all affected class members until timely and legally adequate notice of termination has been provided to them."
The number of Medicaid beneficiaries has steadily decreased in Florida since the end of the public-health emergency. In March 2023, for example, 5.75 million people were enrolled; last month, the total was 4.122 million, according to state Agency for Health Care Administration data.
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