Major Developments in NCLEJ Litigation Since 2002
2003
NCLEJ and Colleagues Save 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 out 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 form going forward, our colleagues in Colorado had time to persuade the legislature to restore Medicaid fort 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)
NCLEJ and Colleagues Supported Access to Education and Training in New York City
We and our colleagues achieved significant improvements in policy and practice through the settlement we negotiated in our groundbreaking class action against the City and State of New York. This 2003 settlement — the first in the nation — makes the City a partner with mothers on welfare in designing effective welfare-to-work plans. As a result, many more women with children are being given access to education and training, including enrolling in vocational education and two-year colleges. Before this settlement, the City had refused to permit tens of thousands of single parents on welfare to spend any time pursuing employment-promoting education and raining. Instead, the City had used these low-income parents to displace city workers who clean streets, parks, and municipal offices, with no prospect of ever being offered full-time employment (Davila v. Eggleston).
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