State immunity: Eleventh Amendment does not bar enforcement of Medicaid consent decree.

Texas Medicaid program officials may be held to assent decrees they enter into level when a violation of the assent decree is not in itself a violation of federal law. In Frew v Hawkins, Justice Kennedy writing for a unanimous leading Court, resolved a circuit split and rest for the petitioners, holding that the Eleventh Amendment does not prohibit the enforcement of the Texas Medicaid program's assent decree obligations. (1) This holding revers the Fifth Circuit's finding that the enjoin obligations were unenforceable. (2)

In 1993 the petitioners, mothers of children eligible for Medicaid's Early and Periodic Screening,