About 8,500 elderly and disabled Medicaid recipients have been awarded a settlement of $27 million in their class action against the state of Florida.
The lawsuit, filed in 2008, alleged that the state's Medicaid program forced the plaintiffs into nursing homes, by making it prohibitively difficult to obtain funding for home or community-based care. The lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Florida violated principles of the Olmstead decision, the 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which indicated that the unjustified institutional isolation of people with disabilities is a form of unlawful discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
