Kentucky’s Need Law for Home Care Agency Valid, Sixth Cir. Says

The owners of a home health-care agency intended to serve Kentucky’s Nepalese-speaking community failed to convince the Sixth Circuit that a state law requiring them to first acquire a certificate of need is invalid.

Kentucky’s certificate-of-need law doesn’t violate the owners’ 14th Amendment due process right to make a living because it’s rationally related to legitimate state interests, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said Monday.

That is, there is a “rational connection” between the law’s purposes and the way it purports to accomplish them, the court said. The law is intended to promote cost efficiency, improve ...