Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Asian American Justice Center, and Asian American
Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Asian American Justice Center, and Asian American Institute, members of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, filed an amicus brief this week with Massachusetts’ highest court supporting legal immigrants suing the state for unlawfully cutting off their health insurance subsidies last year.
The state stopped offering subsidies for health insurance premiums to some legal immigrants who would otherwise be eligible last year, even though it continues funding subsidies for others and for residents born in the U.S.
“The Massachusetts law exacerbated existing inequities in access to health care between immigrants and non-immigrants,” said Julie Su, director of litigation for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. “Thousands of immigrants were cut off from Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Care significantly undermining the state’s landmark efforts to make health care available to all. Massachusetts has sought to solve its economic problems by targeting immigrants, a move that is discriminatory and contrary to the state’s constitutional mandate of equal protection for all.”
The Commonwealth Care health insurance program provides health-insurance premium subsidies to uninsured state residents who are without employer-sponsored insurance, who are ineligible for other state programs, and who have household incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. In 2009, Massachusetts passed a statute that excluded nearly 30,000 legal immigrants from the program. Some who qualified were placed in a less comprehensive and less affordable “bridge” program, but several thousand were excluded entirely from coverage.
“These so-called ‘aliens’ are in this country legally and pay taxes that help fund Commonwealth Care, the state insurance program from which they are now barred,” said Marita Etcubañez, director of programs for the Asian American Justice Center. “This type of blatant discrimination is unconstitutional.”
In February, the public- interest firm Health Law Advocates, filed a class action lawsuit on these immigrants’ behalf.In their amicus brief, members of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice argue that the law’s classification based on immigration status should trigger the strictest standard of judicial review. This standard should apply because the statute’s discrimination against immigrants — a discrete and insular minority — strikes at the core of the equal protection doctrine that the Massachusetts constitution guarantees. Furthermore, the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 does not alter the traditional constitutional analysis requiring strict scrutiny of similar state statutes.
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP’s Los Angeles office, led by Daniel Floyd, Elaine Kim and Minae Yu, provided pro bono assistance on the amicus brief. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is set to hear the case early next month. The case is Finch v. Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority.