Twenty-six states sue to block Medicaid work requirements
A coalition of 26 states sued the Trump administration to block Medicaid work requirements imposed through the president’s tax-cut law, arguing the policy will push hundreds of thousands of people off their health coverage.
The states — including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont — contend the federal guidance implementing the requirements “create[s] an unfair and unnecessary bureaucratic maze for people who are entitled to receive Medicaid coverage.” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said the new conditions “threaten access to healthcare for our most vulnerable residents.”
The mechanism at issue is less the principle of work requirements than the paperwork: enrollees must repeatedly document employment or exemptions, and prior state-level experiments have shown that eligible people lose coverage largely because they fail to navigate the reporting process, not because they stop working. By suing over the implementing rules rather than the statute itself, the states are betting they can narrow or delay the requirements in court before the coverage losses take effect.