From the Metro Desk of Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
CINCINNATI, Ohio – On Friday, nine Cleveland-area physicians who provide health care to poor patients through the Medicaid program, and were blocked by state law from expressing their support for then-Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray (pictured) through campaign contributions to his 2010 race to retain his seat, won their appeal to the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Oh., which determined that the law violated the free speech clause of the First Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional.
At issue were efforts by the physicians to block Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted from enforcing an Ohio statute, also known as a state law, that makes it a crime for Ohio attorney-general and county-prosecutor candidates to accept campaign contributions from physicians who serve Medicaid patients, a disproportionate number of whom are minority and poor.
Cordray lost the Ohio attorney general seat that he was appointed to in 2008 two years later to Republican Michael Dewine, a former Lt. Gov and prior U.S. Senator.
In Jan. Congress appointed him director of the United States Financial Protection Bureau, an agency initiated in 2011 by President Obama, who nominated him six months earlier.
Subodh Chandra, lead counsel for the physicians, who was a law director under former Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell and this year lost the Democratic primary for Cuyahoga County prosecutor to former common pleas judge Tim McGinty, was elated on the victory for his clients, and the underprivileged affected by the controversial state law.
“The physicians are gratified that the appellate court affirmed their constitutional rights of free speech and association," said Chandra. "While they will never get back the rights they lost in the 2010 election, at least from now on, doctors and others will have their free-speech rights restored.”
The Sixth Circuit’s decision reverses the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in Lavin, et al., vs. Husted.
The criminal statute at issue, Ohio Revised Code Section 3599.45, was adopted in 1978 and provides in relevant part that “no candidate for the office of attorney general or county prosecutor or such a candidate’s campaign committee shall knowingly accept any contribution from any Medicaid provider or from any person having an ownership interest in the provider.”
In its unanimous decision, the Sixth Circuit held that "the statute here restricts the First Amendment rights of nearly 100,000 Medicaid providers who do not commit fraud, based on an attenuated concern about a relative handful of providers who do."
The judicial appeals panel went on to say that "there is no avoiding the conclusion that the contribution ban set forth in § 3599.45 is not closely drawn.”
The court also observed that the state’s own statistics for 2009 show that there were nearly 100,000 Ohio Medicaid providers, and that that same year, “only 0.003% were implicated in Medicaid fraud.”
By Kathy Wray Coleman, Associate Publisher, Editor, Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
By Kathy Wray Coleman, Associate Publisher, Editor, Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
By Kathy Wray Coleman, Associate Publisher, Editor, Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
By Kathy Wray Coleman, Associate Publisher, Editor, Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
