The ruling from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Douglas Gerlach comes more than 18 months after the expansion went into effect and means about 350,000 Arizonans who have gained coverage will continue to receive health care insurance.
However, the decision will be appealed by the 36 Republican lawmakers who sued, said their attorney, Christina Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute.
The lawmakers argued that the assessment is a tax that required a 2/3 majority vote to be enacted. Sandefur told a judge last month that keeping the hospital assessment in effect would gut a voter-approved law that requires a supermajority vote for tax increases.
“It was never, ever in my mind about the folks who were being funded or not,” said Republican Steve Yarbrough, Senate majority leader and one of the lawmakers who sued. “I was indeed focused on the constitutional question, and to me that is the key question - is it a tax? And a Superior Court judge has said apparently that it is not. Well, we’ll see what the appellate court ultimately says.”
A lawyer representing state Medicaid Director Tom Betlach said a provision of Proposition 108 exempts the type of fee imposed to help fund Medicaid expansion from the supermajority requirement. Attorney Douglas Northup told Gerlach that Sandefur was trying to convince the judge that an assessment set by a state agency benefiting those who pay it qualifies as a tax.
