At the end of October, Gov. Paul LePage’s administration filed a court petition in an attempt to keep nurse Kaci Hickox from visiting certain public places and from using public transportation. The petition also sought to bar Hickox, who had treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, from leaving Fort Kent without consulting public health authorities and to require that she remain at least 3 feet away from other people in public.
A day later, a judge ruled that the law didn’t allow the administration to limit Hickox’s movements.
Then last week, on Monday, a three-judge panel from the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that federal law doesn’t allow the LePage administration to cut Medicaid coverage for 6,000 low-income 19- and 20-year-olds. In fact, the relevant federal law that remains very much in effect — despite the LePage administration’s contentions — requires Maine to continue providing coverage for the population until 2019.
And on Thursday, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services received a warning from the U.S. Food and Nutrition Service that the federal agency could cut off federal funding that Maine uses to administer its food stamps program. The reason? According to federal officials, the state has failed to follow all policy requirements — which stem from federal law — in implementing a photo ID policy for EBT cards.
Within the past month, LePage has won a resounding re-election victory, but he’s also managed to rack up an impressive record of high-profile legal defeats or setbacks when it comes to implementing top political priorities. It shows some of the priorities to which LePage has devoted substantial time, political capital and money are in clear conflict with state and federal laws.
That phenomenon isn’t unique to the past month.
Earlier this year, LePage’s Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule that would have made many noncitizens ineligible for General Assistance, a source of last-resort aid issued by municipalities often to help low-income residents cover rent and utility bills. When Attorney General Janet Mills’ office declined to approve the rule, citing potential violations of the U.S. and Maine constitutions, DHHS skirted the established process and moved ahead with a similar, stripped-down policy change without submitting it to Mills’ office for review. The policy change is now the subject of a lawsuit.
The Medicaid coverage case that LePage lost in federal court last week isn’t a new matter, either. The First Circuit ruling was only the latest setback for LePage in a battle he’s waged against the federal government for more than two years in an effort to force cuts to Maine’s Medicaid program. In 2012, the LePage administration sued the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in an effort to force the agency to render a decision quickly on whether Maine could cut 36,000 low-income residents from Medicaid. The court swiftly dismissed the case.
CMS, the federal agency, later allowed about a third of the cuts sought by LePage — the extent of cuts allowed by federal law.
The photo EBT card matter is also one the LePage administration has pressed for a while. The administration launched a pilot project in the Bangor region last spring and quickly moved to statewide implementation — flouting federal warnings of potential legal violations at both points.
That LePage continues to pursue policies that fail to pass legal muster shows, at best, a dogged determination by the governor to press for changes he thinks are right for Maine even if current laws don’t allow them. At worst, it shows an irresponsible disregard or disdain for both state and federal laws that stand in the way of LePage’s assistance-cutting political agenda.
