LINCOLN- On Tuesday, Nebraska Appleseed, a local criminal and social justice advocacy group, filed a lawsuit against two state Department of Health and Human Services officials, accusing them of terminating a North Platte woman's Medicaid coverage without adequate notice in what the organization described as an "unconstitutional deprivation of (her) due process rights."

In its termination letter to Gillian Filyaw, a 23-year-old mother of two whose Medicaid coverage was terminated on May 1st, HHS provided "only a conclusory reason for her termination--that 'income exceeds standards,'" according to the lawsuit. The notice, Appleseed argued, did not identity Filyaw's household income, size, or the income limit used to determine her Medicaid eligibility.

In the 16-page lawsuit, lawyers for Appleseed contend that the notice sent to Filyaw, identical to the notices issued to more than 2022 Medicaid enrollees in the state since March 2023, "does not satisfy due process requirements and are therefore unconstitutional." The nonprofit will now seek to convince a federal judge that the complaint against HHS Director Steve Corsi and Matt Ahern, interim director of the Division of Medicaid and Long-Term Care, should be a class-action lawsuit.

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