Court of Appeals punts AHCCCS cuts to the Supremes

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

There is a troubling trend in Arizona's courts in recent years. Whenever a court is confronted with a controversial political issue, rather than address the issue in a scholarly well-reasoned opinion, the court will simply enter an order and opinion with the full knowledge that the parties will appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.

Judges used to take pride in the fact that their decisions were not overturned by a higher court. Not so much any more. Now they just punt controversial political cases to the Supremes.

This is the best procedural posture explanation I can give for the muddled and WRONG decisions that have been entered by the Courts in the legal challenge to AHCCCS cuts as a result of Arizona's budget crisis (more accurately a structural revenue crisis).

The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports Appeals court upholds state Medicaid cuts - Arizona Capitol Times:

[The Court of Appeals] rejected a Maricopa County Superior Ruling that upheld the cuts, saying the lower court reached the right result for the wrong reasons. In her ruling, appellate Judge Patricia Norris wrote that the lower court erred when it said Proposition 204, the 2000 ballot measure that drastically expanded AHCCCS coverage, did not require the Legislature to fully fund Medicaid.

While the issue of what constitutes “available sources” is a political question, the court ruled that the mandate requiring the Legislature to fund the Medicaid program is not. The ruling conflicts sharply with Superior Court Judge Mark Brain’s ruling that voters cannot force the Legislature to appropriate funding for AHCCCS.

“We read the supplemental funding provision to mean what it says: if supplemental funding is needed, the Legislature shall provide it from ‘other available sources,’” the judge wrote.

It's looking good for the AHCCCS plaintiffs, right? Not so fast. Meet the "political question" doctrine, which I argue the Appellate Court misapplied here:

[The Court of Appeals rejected plaintiff's arguments] that state law and voter initiative requires the Legislature to fund the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System with “any other available sources” if money from a court settlement with tobacco companies fell short. The ruling states that the provision is a political question that is not open to interpretation by the judiciary.

“Determining whether the Legislature has, as it has stated, or has not, as petitioners argue, provided supplemental funding from ‘any other available sources’ would require the judiciary to set priorities and make funding decisions entrusted to the other branches of government,” the ruling read.

On this point the Court of Appeals is WRONG and disregarded long-standing Arizona Supreme Court precedents from the school district property tax equalization battles from a couple decades ago.

In those cases, the Court did not defer to the legislature, ducking its responsiblity by resort to misapplication of the political question doctrine. The Arizona Supreme Court found the state in violation of the Arizona Constitution and ordered the legislature to devise a property tax sytem to equalize school district funding to create a level playing field for all Arizona students. The details of how the legislature was to achieve this was left to the legislature. The Arizona Supreme Court did not view this as "setting priorities and making funding decisions entrusted to the other branches of government,” but rather it was enforcing provisions of the Arizona Constitution.

The Court of Appeals failed to enforce provisions of the Arizona Constitution in this opinion. The Court expressly found that Prop. 204 is a constitutional mandate: “We read the supplemental funding provision to mean what it says: if supplemental funding is needed, the Legislature shall provide it from ‘other available sources.” The Court then vitiates this constitutional mandate by saying that the Court cannot enforce the mandate by wrongly asserting the Court would have to make funding decisions. No, it would not. The Court simply issues a Writ of Mandamus ordering the legislature to comply with this constitutional mandate. The details of how the legislature is to achieve this is left to the legislature. The Court has ordered this remedy in the past.

There cannot be a constitutional mandate without any legal remedy to enforce the mandate, or it is no longer a "mandate." Under rules of statutory and constitutional interpretation, the Court cannot render a provision of the Constitution null and void through legal sophistry, but must give full force and effect to the constitutional provision. Here the Court found that Prop. 204 "means what it says." It now must enforce the law.

Attorney Tim Hogan of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of several Arizonans who no longer qualified for AHCCCS under the enrollment freeze, correctly noted that:

“The courts have, in the past, determined that funding issues like this have been justiciable, most notably in the school finance cases,” Hogan said. “That’s the case that we’ll be making to the Supreme Court, that there are certain expenditures that are required by law that the court must enforce, and this is one of them.”

Hogan argued that the cuts violated both Prop. 204 and the Voter Protection Act [Prop. 107], which prohibits the Legislature from overturning voter-approved laws.

Mr. Hogan is correct on both counts. Hopefully the Arizona Supreme Court will correct this travesty of justice and clear legal error by the lower courts.