If You Move, You Lose: The Interstate Medicaid Obligation to Special Needs Adopted Children

This Article presents the history of the adoption assistance programs of the United States and analyzes state Medicaid practice related to the federal statutory provisions that established the benefit and the Constitutional guarantees of the freedom of travel. It argues that the state practice of denying Medicaid to a child based on the state from which the child is adopted clashes with the Supreme Court's decision in Saenz v. Roe which held that the Equal Protection Clause does not tolerate a hierarchy of 45 subclasses of similarly situated citizens based on the location of their "prior residence." This Article posits that children adopted with special needs who have been found to be Medicaid eligible remain Medicaid eligible regardless of the state from which they were adopted and the state in which they presently reside.