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Judge extends temporary block, preventing Idaho from verifying immigration status for HIV program • Idaho Capital Sun [1]
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Date: 2025-07-15
A federal judge on Tuesday extended a temporary legal block, preventing Idaho from enforcing a new state law meant to prevent unauthorized immigrants from accessing publicly funded assistance in a federally funded health program.
U.S. District Judge Amanda Brailsford extended a temporary restraining order after hearing oral arguments in a lawsuit that challenges the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s plans to require citizenship status reviews for an HIV treatment program under the new law.
The judge granted preliminary class-action status in the lawsuit, which blocks the new law from denying HIV treatment to any immigrant patients who are or could benefit from the program in the future, ACLU of Idaho spokesperson Rebecca De León told the Idaho Capital Sun after the hearing.
The lawsuit argues Idaho’s law would deny immigrants life-saving health care that prevents HIV transmission.
The order blocks the new Idaho state law’s enforcement in the program for about two weeks, until the judge decides on whether to grant a preliminary injunction, which could block the law’s enforcement while the lawsuit proceeds.
Lawsuit targets new Idaho law denying public benefits to immigrants without ‘legal status’
Before Idaho’s new law, House Bill 135, took effect this month, the ACLU of Idaho and other legal groups sued state officials, alleging the law is unconstitutional by violating equal protection, that it conflicts with federal laws and that it even denies federal funds to people eligible under federal law.
The legal groups are representing in the lawsuit five unnamed immigrants who rely on the program and an Idaho doctor who cares for dozens of patients in the program.
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Within days of Idaho’s new law taking effect, the judge issued a temporary restraining order. The law cuts the few publicly funded services that unauthorized immigrants can receive in the state.
Joanna Cuevas Ingram, an attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, called the case straightforward. She argued Idaho’s new law is preempted by federal law — and violates the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution — because federal law defines eligibility for federal public benefits.
Idaho’s new law requires immigrants prove their “lawful presence” to receive public benefits.
But that term has different meanings in different laws, ACLU of Idaho attorney Emily Croston told the court.
Representing state government officials who were sued over the new law, David Myers, a deputy attorney general, argued the suing patients and doctor lacked a right to enforce federal law themselves. And he pointed to recent and historical legal guidance from the federal executive branch, arguing that extra eligibility requirements can be added to public benefits.
Last week, the federal U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, announced it revoked a Clinton-era legal interpretation that HHS says “improperly extended certain federal public benefits to illegal aliens.”
Idaho’s law applies to a range of public benefits, beyond the HIV treatment program. ACLU is considering legal challenges for other programs affected by the law, Croston told the Sun.
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