The lawsuit was filed against the Department of Social and Health Services last week in Thurston County Superior Court, and a copy is here. DSHS spokesman Thomas Shapley said in an email late last week that he would not talk about the lawsuit directly:
The suit challenges the rule-making process for targeting services to individual clients’ needs. It also contends DSHS is cutting hours as a result. It also challenges what it says is a second new DSHS policy that cuts additional “add-on” hours for clients that live 45 miles or more from services.
The case has been assigned to Thurston County Judge Tom McPhee and SEIU spokesman Benton Strong said today a hearing is tentatively set for March 16. McPhee is the same judge who ruled in late 2010 that the state owed $57 million to about 22,000 caregivers. That was in SEIU’s 2007 lawsuit that claimed the state breached a homecare contract with a 2003 rule that reduced hours for Medicaid clients who were cared for by live-in caregivers – what is called “shared living.”
As outlined by the new suit, shared benefit clients include those with a live-in caregiver or where more than one client is getting services.
SEIU says the state adopted new rules in January in secret that limit hours for “shared benefit” clients and also “add on” hours for home care clients that live more than 45 miles from services.
SEIU contended the hours cuts are on top of millions of hours already eliminated in state budgets in recent years. In a statement, the union quotes Adam Glickman-Flora, an SEIU 775 vice president, as saying:
“Cutting hours for those who live at least 45 minutes from essential services means that vulnerable people could go without food. Cutting off-site laundry time could force people susceptible to illness to wear dirty laundry, and increase the risk of complications. These cuts put people at risk, which is something DSHS would have learned had the agency bothered to go through the regular process instead of acting alone.”
The SEIU suit asks to declare invalid the emergency rule-making by DSHS in November, December and January and to issue injunctions.
Gov. Chris Gregoire and state lawmakers have contended with numerous lawsuits in recent years over efforts to curtail benefits, and the rule-making process for accomplishing budget cuts has been a focus in several actions that overturned or blocked the cuts.
UPDATE on original 9:27 a.m. post: Carrie Bashaw, an assistant attorney general representing the state in the earlier SEIU lawsuit, said that first case remains on appeal. Bashaw said plaintiffs, who include two private parties besides SEIU in the consolidated case, were awarded $38.7 million in lawyer fees and costs - bringing the total judgment to more than $95 million.
Both sides have asked the state Supreme Court to take the case on direct review.
I have prepared a story for print editions of the paper for Wednesday.
