NCLEJ and Colleagues Saved Medicaid for Legal Immigrants in Colorado

We won emergency court orders in 2003 blocking a Colorado law that would have ended Medicaid for more than 3,500 legal immigrants. If we and our colleagues had not stepped in, low-income immigrants – many of them elderly and infirm – would have lost essential and literally life-saving health care (including chemotherapy, home care, nursing home residency, prescription drugs, and doctor visits). In 2004 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the Center’s argument that the state’s implementation violated due process. Because the lawsuit stopped the cuts from going forward, our colleagues in Colorado had time to persuade the legislature to restore Medicaid for this vulnerable population. We worked with the ACLU of Colorado, the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project, the National Immigration Law Center, and the National Health Law Program (Soskin v. Reinertson).