Disabled Idahoans win lawsuit for rights

About 4,000 developmentally disabled Idahoans won a class-action Medicaid lawsuit this week against the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, a victory that will reinforce the due process of their rights as citizens.

According to a press release Wednesday from the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, Idaho Chief Federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill ordered IDHW to develop substantial additional safeguards to protect Idaho Medicaid participants.

The ruling comes as an ACLU of Idaho victory in the K.W. v. Armstrong class action case and about three months after IDHW abruptly announced that it would reduce Medicaid reimbursement rates for supported living and residential habilitation provider agencies.

"It makes me happy," said Kathy Gray, whose adult autistic son, Cody, participates in the res hab program. "My fear was, 'What's going to happen the next time?' because it was so hard for all those families getting that news."

The lawsuit contended that the IDHW "cut Medicaid participants' assistance without adequate notification or procedural protections," the press release states.

The federal court agreed that IDHW "arbitrarily deprives participants of their property rights and hence violates due process."

"They acted like they didn't have to answer to us. It was like, 'This is what we decided, this is what's going to happen,'" Gray said. "I felt like we didn't have any due process and this decision was made and it was very frightening."

The decision follows a longstanding injunction that has restored about $30 million of Medicaid assistance annually in Idaho. The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction in 2015. The ACLU stated in the release that before its lawsuit was filed, IDHW refused to disclose the reasons for cutting Medicaid assistance, claiming that decision-making formulas were "trade secrets" and not available to the public.

The court's decision orders IDHW to develop a plan to ensure all Medicaid participants have people to help them receive all the assistance to which they are entitled, mandating that IDHW identifies the standards it uses to make assistance determinations, and ordering testing to ensure the reliability and accuracy of IDHW's automated systems.

Niki Forbing-Orr, public information officer for IDHW, said the department's legal staff is looking over the decision.

"We’re really still analyzing the decision and trying to figure out what our next steps will be," she said.

"The court has continued its injunction preserving current individual care budget levels, so individuals and families will continue to be protected," said James Piotrowski, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys.

Piotrowski said the plan development requirements will make the appeal process more accessible to people with disabilities, improve testing and tools for the budget process and allow full access to evaluation materials to ensure participants are working with people who are committed to serving the participants' best interests. The term "health and safety" will also now have to be defined, whereas before it was undefined and used to deny many appeals for increased budgets, Piotrowski said.

"A victory like this is, of course, gratifying," Piotrowski said. "But the most important aspect of this is helping the individual Idahoans who are simply incapable of protecting their own rights, and the families of those Idahoans who lack the knowledge and expertise to pursue appeals and protect their family members' rights."

Richard Eppink, the legal director of the ACLU of Idaho and also one of the plaintiffs' attorneys in the case, said "the amount of trouble Idaho's government has gone through to avoid its constitutional responsibilities in this case is staggering."

"This has been a long, long struggle to just get basic fundamental constitutional protections for some of Idaho's most vulnerable and most needy families," he said. "I regret that it has taken so long and we've had to go through so many proceedings in this litigation to, in each turn, gain more of these constitutional protections that have been established for decades. For centuries, really.

"Each time we prevailed in this case, and we prevailed in every stage, it's then a victory. This has been the biggest victory so far," he continued. "I'm hopeful that IDHW and the state will comply with what the court has ordered. We will continue to stand up for these families and for the constitutional rights of all Idahoans even if that means there's another phase to this particular case."