Judge Daniel Traynor of the U.S. District Court in North Dakota issued the order Monday from Bismarck, dealing a setback to a Biden administration rule that was estimated to allow 147,000 immigrants to enroll for coverage. Traynor's ruling came in a lawsuit filed over the policy and will remain in effect until the matter can go to trial.
The ruling applies to illegal immigrants in 19 states where Republican attorneys general sued to avoid having to comply with the new policy. They cited concern over illegals possibly qualifying for public subsidies available to many people insured under the ACA.
The GOP state officials argued that the rule created earlier this year by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would be a strong incentive for individuals to remain in the U.S. illegally, creating substantial costs for states. They argued that both the Affordable Care Act and a 1996 law prohibit U.S. government benefits flowing to illegal immigrants.
Traynor, a Trump appointee during his first term in office, concluded through what he called “a common-sense inference” that access to subsidized ACA coverage is a powerful incentive for people to remain in the U.S. illegally, creating a substantial risk that states will “suffer monetary harm.”
Federal law gives CMS the authority to determine whether someone is living in the U.S. legally, but, Traynor wrote, “It by no means allows the agency to circumvent congressional authority and redefine the term ‘lawfully present.’”
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach called the decision “a victory for the rule of law." He told reporters after a hearing in Bismarck in October that the Biden administration sought to redefine what it means to be an immigrant living in the U.S. legally by “executive fiat,” calling the rule “Alice in Wonderland stuff.”
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley added that American taxpayers, through Congress, determine how the federal government treats immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
“And it doesn’t always come across as friendly and nice and cuddly, but it speaks to the access to our health care system, the cost of our health care system, and the burden on the American public, the taxpayer,” he said.
Kansas and North Dakota are the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in August. They've been joined by Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
“Thankfully, the court put another nail in the coffin of Biden’s radical left-wing agenda,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement Tuesday.
