A federal judge in California ruled Monday that the federal government is allowed to share basic information about Medicaid participants with Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid a government effort to locate people they believe are in the country illegally.
The plan to share information from the federally backed program was blocked by a preliminary injunction that applied to the 20 states that sued, including California.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria partially rejected the preliminary injunction on Monday, writing that “basic biographical, location and contact information” is legal under the law.
But he also granted an injunction as it relates to any information beyond that.
“We are disappointed by the court’s decision allowing the sharing of some Medicaid data with ICE,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said in a statement Monday.
Bonta’s office said, referring to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “We are satisfied, however, that the court includes DHS’s broader efforts to obtain more sensitive health data; data from citizens, lawful permanent residents, and others with lawful status; and data from other CMS-administered health programs.”
Monday’s order said CMS, the Medicaid services agency, said in a notice that it would “share the minimum required information,” such as “citizenship and immigration status, location, and phone number.”
Immigrants living in the United States illegally are largely not eligible for Medicaid.
All states are required to offer emergency Medicaid – temporary coverage that pays only for life-saving services in emergency rooms – to anyone, regardless of immigration status.
Emergency Medicaid expenditures account for less than 1% of program expenditures, according to A study was published In October in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Chhabria’s order states that basic information is something that the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees ICE, has always had the authority to request.
Chhabria also said in his partial order that there are many unanswered questions.
He wrote, “Beyond the basic information discussed above, the policies are completely vague and do not appear to be the product of a coherent decision-making process.”
His order grants a preliminary injunction against sharing broad categories of information.
Chhabria cited the question of whether DHS can request information about lawful citizens or lawful permanent residents, including mixed households in which some are in the country legally and others are not.
“The new policies are completely vague about what that information would be, why it would be needed for immigration enforcement purposes, and what the risks of sharing it with DHS would be,” they wrote.
Medicaid is a joint federal and state program with approximately 79 million enrollees nationwide. In California it is called Medi-Cal.
The California Attorney General’s Office said Monday that participants had an expectation of privacy.
It states, “When individuals signed up for Medi-Cal, they did so with the understanding that their data would not be used for purposes unrelated to the operation of the program.”
CMS has long had a policy of not sharing data about Medicaid patients with ICE, and since at least 2013, ICE has had a policy of not using that data for immigration enforcement, Chhabria wrote in a ruling in August.
But in June, CMS began sharing data about Medicaid patients with ICE, and in July, CMS and ICE “entered into a formal data-sharing agreement,” Chhabria wrote in background on the case.
The lawsuit was against the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security and others.
Those agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday evening.
The previous decision restricting information sharing will remain in effect until next Monday, which was its previous expiration date, “for administrative purposes only,” Monday’s decision said.
The court has scheduled a hearing for Friday if necessary, according to court documents. The final decision on the case has not been made.
