A coalition of 20 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on July 1, challenging its decision to hand over the personal data of some Medicaid enrollees to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The complaint, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, was filed in the District Court for the Northern District of California and alleges that the mass transfer of data violates federal health privacy protection laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as well as the Federal Information Security Modernization Act and the Privacy Act.
The attorneys general are asking the court to find that the administration’s transfer of Medicaid data was unauthorized and illegal under federal law, including the Administrative Procedure Act. They are seeking to block the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from making further transfers of such data to the DHS, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), or any other federal agency.
The attorneys general also asked the court to prevent any federal agency from using Medicaid data for immigration enforcement, population surveillance, or similar purposes, and to order the destruction of any data that has already been transferred.
“The Trump Administration has upended longstanding privacy protections with its decision to illegally share sensitive, personal health data with ICE. In doing so, it has created a culture of fear that will lead to fewer people seeking vital emergency medical care,” Bonta said in a July 1 statement.
“We’re headed to court to prevent any further sharing of Medicaid data—and to ensure any of the data that’s already been shared is not used for immigration enforcement purposes.”
As of January 2025, 78.4 million people were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) across the United States, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint notes that a certain amount of personal data is routinely exchanged between the states and the federal government for the purpose of verifying eligibility for Medicaid.
In June, California, Illinois, and Washington state learned that HHS had disclosed “en masse” private Medicaid files to DHS representing millions of individuals, according to the lawsuit.
All of those states allow illegal immigrants to enroll in Medicaid programs that pay for their expenses using only state taxpayer dollars.
The data was “personally identifiable, not anonymized or hashed, and it included Medicaid beneficiaries’ immigration status and addresses, among other details,” the complaint states.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit note that HHS said it handed over the massive amount of personal data to DHS “to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them.”
In May, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said his agency and DOGE had identified at least $14 billion in Medicaid fraud, waste, and abuse, including individuals who wrongly enrolled in the program across multiple states.
The context in which the data was shared with ICE, however, “casts serious doubt on the government’s explanation for its actions,” the attorneys general wrote in their lawsuit.
They said the federal government is creating a large database for “’mass deportations’ and other large-scale immigration enforcement and mass surveillance purposes.”
“Plaintiffs bring this action to protect their State Medicaid programs, and to prevent them from being used in service of an anti-immigrant crusade, or other purposes unrelated to administration of those programs,” the suit states.
The states of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington have joined California in the lawsuit.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement last month that the department is “aggressively cracking down on states that may be misusing federal Medicaid funds.”
Nixon also said that the data sharing was legal.
“HHS acted entirely within its legal authority–and in full compliance with all applicable laws–to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them,” he said.
The Epoch Times reached out to the HHS and DHS for further comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
