Health (Right to)

Petitioners challenged the 2009 decision of the State of Massachusetts to exclude a group of legal immigrants from its Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Program. Plaintiffs alleged that such exclusion violated the Equal Protection Clause recognized by the Constitution of Massachusetts.

The applicant, Ms. N, a Ugandan national, entered the UK in March 1998. She was seriously ill and was diagnosed as HIV positive. She completed an asylum application within a few days, claiming she had been raped by the National Resistance Movement in Uganda because of her association with the Lord's Resistance Army. In August 1998, Ms. N developed Kaposi's sarcoma. In March 2001, a physician prepared an expert report which expressed that without regular antiretroviral treatment and monitoring, the applicant's life expectancy would be less than one year.