A federal appeals court panel on Friday unanimously upheld a lower court’s ruling striking down work rules for Medicaid recipients in Arkansas, casting more doubt over broader Trump administration efforts to require poor people to work, volunteer or train for a job as a condition of getting government health coverage.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that approval of the Arkansas work requirement by the health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar, was “arbitrary and capricious” because it did not address how the program would promote the objective of Medicaid as defined under federal law: providing health coverage to the poor.

“The means that Congress selected to achieve the objectives of Medicaid was to provide health care coverage to populations that otherwise could not afford it,” Judge David Sentelle, a Reagan appointee, wrote in the ruling. “Importantly, the Secretary disregarded this statutory purpose in his analysis.”

Concurring were Judges Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, and Harry Edwards, a Carter appointee.

It was not immediately clear whether the Trump administration would appeal to the Supreme Court. In a statement about the ruling, a spokesman for Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, said the agency “is reviewing and evaluating the opinion and determining next steps.”