Edu-Implications of Yesterday's Supreme Court 7-2 Medicaid Ruling
Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld the bulk of President Obama's health care reform. Amidst the drama, it was easy to overlook SCOTUS's 7-2 ruling to strike down the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion. Yet, that ruling had some important implications for education. The Court limited Uncle Sam's ability to withhold aid from states which refuse to comply with new federal mandates. This has potentially big impacts on current and future education policymaking, on questions ranging from ESEA/NCLB to the Higher Education Act.
In Ed Week's "School Law" blog, Mark Walsh explained the issue succinctly:
On the Medicaid issue, the court effectively ruled 7-2 that the Medicaid expansion violates the U.S. Constitution by threatening the states with the loss of their existing Medicaid funding if they decline to comply with the expansion.
Congress put "a gun to the head" of the states to force them to add a much larger pool of the