Minnesota Senior Fed'n v. United States,
No. 00-3139 (8th Cir. Dec. 13, 2001)

When a Florida resident who wanted to live with her daughter in Minnesota sought a declaratory judgment that the Medicare + Choice formula violated her constitutional rights to travel and to equal protection of the law, the Eighth Circuit granted the Department of Health and Human Services' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.

Although the formula produced wide variations in the payments Medicare provides to managed health care providers, with the end result being that Medicare benefits are more generous in some communities than in others, the court held that such disparity did not violate a beneficiary's constitutional rights to travel and to equal protection of the law. Equal protection was not violated "merely because the classifications made by [the] laws are imperfect" or because a classification resulted in some inequality.

The court held that the formula did not implicate the right to travel and that the beneficiary's argument that a federal program that fails to achieve nationwide uniformity in the distribution of government benefits should be subject to strict scrutiny because it would deter travel to unfavored locales was over broad. Instead, rational basis review was appropriate in considering the constitutionality of federal social welfare programs such as Medicare. The Eighth Circuit concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court would not extend the constitutional right to travel to governmental disincentives of this type, provided they withstand rational basis review.