Ban Delayed on Illegal Immigrants’ Prenatal Care

A Superior Court judge in Oakland ruled Friday that California must wait for federal guidelines before denying subsidized pregnancy care to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, seriously undermining Gov. Pete Wilson’s plan to begin imposing the ban by Jan. 1.

Judge Sandra Margulies, citing a little-noticed provision in the federal budget law passed in the summer, concluded that the state cannot proceed until the U.S. attorney general establishes procedures for verifying applicants’ eligibility.

California authorities had proposed their own regulatory scheme, but the judge found that Congress clearly intended for the federal government to decide how states can verify which noncitizens qualify for benefits and which do not.

In addition, Margulies ruled that the state had erred in not considering the possible adverse effect on business of a cutoff of pregnancy care for illegal immigrants. According to state figures, the program last year pumped $83.7 million into local clinics, county hospitals and other care providers.

The state court ruling would once again seem to thwart Wilson in his long-term campaign to deny aid under the Medi-Cal program to 70,000 illegal immigrant women statewide. Wilson vowed a swift appeal, but attorneys on both sides said it would be difficult for the state to win a reversal and reinstate the aid ban by Jan. 1.

“Today’s decision flies in the face of federal law, the will of the people of this state and common sense,” Wilson said.

In fact, the governor ran up against the same legal doctrine--federal preeminence in immigration law--that has also stopped the implementation of Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that would bar illegal immigrants from receiving public education, subsidized health care and other government services. A U.S. District judge has blocked imposition of the ballot measure, calling it an illegal state scheme to regulate immigration.

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The congressional requirement that the U.S. attorney general should provide verification guidelines, the judge found, was manifest in a provision of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, signed into law in August.

The provision amended the sweeping welfare overhaul that Congress approved in 1996. That law generally prohibited state and local governments from providing nonemergency aid to illegal immigrants and many other categories of noncitizens deemed “not qualified” for such assistance. States were allowed to get around the ban by passing laws authorizing the aid, but Wilson has blocked legislative efforts to circumvent the federal prohibition.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno was supposed to issue verification guidelines to the states last month, but the rules have yet to be released. There was no word from Washington on how much longer it will take.

The Oakland suit was filed in June by three women, two neighborhood clinics and a Latino health coalition. They and others maintain that denying prenatal care to undocumented women is a counterproductive strategy that will heighten infant mortality and illness while increasing the incidence of birth defects, abnormalities and the spread of infectious disease.

“This is a victory for all Californians,” said Mark Savage, managing attorney with Public Advocates, a San Francisco-based group that represented opponents of the governor’s planned ban. “Providing prenatal care is an effective way to have healthy communities.”

Times staff writer David Lesher in Sacramento contributed to this story.