SLC subpoenas documents from Florida Agency For Health Care Administration in lawsuit alleging mismanagement

Last September, Southern Legal Counsel—along with Legal Services of Greater Miami and pro bono attorney Nancy Wright—filed a lawsuit in federal court against Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), claiming that that the state’s management of its Medicaid Long Term Care Waiver program violates the U.S. Constitution, the Medicaid Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

AHCA subsequently filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Grant v. Weida.

As we wait on the court to issue its ruling on the state’s motion to dismiss, we are pushing ahead. Our litigation team, comprised of Wright, who is lead counsel, SLC attorneys Chelsea Dunn and Jodi Siegel, and our colleagues Jeff Hearne and Jocelyn Armand at Legal Services of Greater Miami, is engaged in the complex discovery process needed to pursue our claims.

Grant et al. v. Weida challenges AHCA’s (Florida’s state Medicaid agency) flawed administration of the Long Term Care program for the elderly and persons with disabilities. Plaintiffs allege that AHCA has violated the Constitution and the Medicaid Act by failing to provide them with due process and a meaningful appeal when services are denied, reduced, or terminated; and that AHCA has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, placing them at risk of institutionalization by allowing managed care plans to make service authorization decisions unrelated to their care needs.

These claims require extensive discovery across both the state agency and the seven managed care plans that ACHA contracts with to deliver coverage of long-term care services. SLC has already received over 40,000 pages from AHCA in response to its requests for production, and we are awaiting a response on interrogatories seeking detailed information about Medicaid notices and appeals, as well as AHCA’s oversight of the managed care plans. In addition, SLC has served seven subpoenas duces tecum (subpoenas for the production of documents) to the plans. Next up: fifteen depositions of AHCA administrators and employees and plan representatives.

This lawsuit seeks to secure important rights on behalf of individuals with disabilities and the elderly, including the right to due process and the right not to be segregated into institutions. Over the coming weeks and months, SLC and its partners will continue to work hard to obtain the evidence necessary to prevail on Plaintiffs’ claims.