Massachusetts high court orders health coverage for legal immigrants
A man is pushed in a wheelchair outside Massachusetts General Hospital.
Massachusetts cannot bar legal immigrants who've lived in the US for less than five years from a state health care program, according to the state’s highest court.
The Supreme Judicial Court said a 2009 law that cut legal immigrants from the subsidized Commonwealth Care insurance program "violates their rights to equal protection under the Massachusetts Constitution," the Boston Globe reported.
Massachusetts in 2009 cut about 26,000 immigrants from Commonwealth Care — a program created in 2006 under the state law that required most residents to have health coverage — to save $130 million during a budget crisis.
According to Fox News, several other states also have stripped benefits for legal immigrants in order to cut costs during the recession.
The court's unanimous decision "edges the state closer to its goal of providing near-universal health care coverage to its residents," the New York Times wrote.
The ruling also means Massachusetts lawmakers must quickly come up with about $150 million to provide health insurance to tens of thousands of legal immigrants, according to the Globe.
The court's opinion, written by Justice R. Cordy, "recognized the financial burden but said money could not factor in the ruling," the Globe wrote.
“If the plaintiffs’ right to equal protection of the laws has been violated … then it is our duty to say so,” Cordy wrote. “Fiscal considerations alone cannot justify a state’s invidious discrimination against aliens."
He also dismissed the state’s argument that the cuts were in line with federal policies to deny Medicaid assistance to the same group of legal immigrants.
“The legislature may not lean on federal policy as a crutch to absolve it of examining whether its own invidious discrimination is truly necessary,” Cordy wrote.
In 2006, then-Gov. Mitt Romney, viewed as the likely GOP nominee for the presidential election in November, enabled qualifying legal immigrants to participate in the Commonwealth Care program, part of his 2006 health care reform law.