Kansas v. United States

Update: On December 23, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals granted proposed intervenors Dania Quezada Torres, Claudia Moya Lopez, Hyun Kim and CASA’s motion to appear as amici to stay the preliminary injunction below, but the Eighth Circuit ultimately denied the stay, allowing the preliminary injunction at the district court below to go into effect while the parties brief the merits and defendants seek to vacate the preliminary injunction on appeal.

Appellate briefing in the case will be completed on February 19, 2025.

In the 19 states covered by the preliminary injunction, DACA recipients, and other immigrants who became eligible for the ACA under the final rule, are no longer eligible. Individuals who already enrolled will have their health insurance cancelled and receive more information from the marketplace where they signed up.

In all other states, DACA recipients remain eligible for ACA coverage and can enroll through open enrollment or afterwards if they qualify for a special enrollment period.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has posted an update with more information. NILC will also provide further updates as this case proceeds.

Case Overview

On May 3, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a new rule which clarifies that DACA recipients, as well as youth granted Special Immigrant Juvenile classification (SIJ), children under 14 seeking asylum, withholding of removal, or relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) are eligible to purchase health insurance coverage and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Final Rule goes into effect on November 1, 2024, and is projected to help more than 100,000 young people gain access to health insurance.

 On behalf of CASA and individual intervenors with DACA, NILC is defending the ACA Final Rule against an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) challenge brought by Kansas and 18 other states, including North Dakota, Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, Arkansas, Texas and Kentucky.

On August 30, 2024, Plaintiff States filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction seeking to postpone the November 1 effective enrollment date of the Final Rule and deny 100,000 otherwise eligible individuals access to qualified health insurance plans under the ACA. 

On September 20, 2024, The National Immigration Law Center and pro bono counsel from Gibson Dunn LLP moved to intervene on behalf of CASA and three individual intervenors with DACA who are planning to enroll in qualified ACA health insurance plans on November 1.

CASA and individual Defendant Intervenors also filed a motion to dismiss North Dakota as a Plaintiff and transfer the case from the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota to U.S. District Court for the District of Washington, D.C.