The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a decision upholding reduced Medicaid reimbursement for children’s hospitals, turning away a chance to revisit the so-called Chevron deference — the longstanding practice of having judges defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes.

In a brief order, the high court voted not to scrutinize a D.C. Circuit decision that backed the U.S. Department Health and Human Services’ regulation to reduce Medicaid reimbursement for hospitals serving low-income patients, a finding that the hospitals said would have given the justices a chance to “reassess Chevron’s increasingly questioned foundations.”

Published in Law360