The Court’s decision to hear
Gresham and
Philbrick was unexpected since the lower court rulings rested on narrow ground, namely, that the Trump administration had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to consider the central issue of the experiments’ impact on Medicaid coverage. In this sense, the rulings were consistent with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals case last year. In that case, which dealt with the Trump administration’s effort to end the program, the Court focused on the failure to follow legal process, not the basic power to end the program.