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The Supreme Court on Tuesday is being asked to correct another misconceived decision that has let individuals sue states under a Reconstruction Era law for not complying with federal spending rules. This sleeper case hasn’t generated headlines but has major constitutional implications.
Congress typically sets conditions on money distributed to states for programs such as Medicaid. The question in Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion County v. Talevski is whether individuals can enforce Congress’s rules in federal court and receive damages for state violations.
A man with progressive dementia sued an Indiana municipal nursing home for allegedly violating his rights under the 1987 Federal Nursing Home Reform Act. He says he has a right to be “free” from “chemical restraints” and forced transfers because doctors prescribed him several drugs and sought to move him to another facility against his will after he sexually harassed staff.
The 1987 law contains extensive administrative remedies for residents to protest treatment and doesn’t explicitly permit residents to seek relief in federal court. But the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that the resident could sue the government nursing home under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871.
That law lets individuals sue state officials and others acting “under color” of any state law in federal court for depriving them of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.” It was intended to let blacks enforce rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendments against state governments.
A 5-4 High Court majority held in Wilder (1990) that federal spending laws may create implied civil rights that can be enforced in court as long as the statutes don’t explicitly preclude private lawsuits or include a “sufficiently comprehensive” alternative remedial scheme. The ruling caused confusion in lower courts that the High Court has struggled to clean up.
In Gonzaga (2002), the Court expressly rejected “the notion that our cases permit anything short of an unambiguously conferred right to support a cause of action brought under § 1983.” A Court plurality in 2015 held that “modern jurisprudence permitting intended beneficiaries to sue does not generally apply” to contracts between governments.
Yet the confusion in lower courts has continued. Justice
Clarence Thomas
in 2018 noted in an opinion joined by Justices
Neil Gorsuch
and
Samuel Alito
that “the division in the lower courts stems, at least in part, from this Court’s own lack of clarity” on the issue.
“We have acknowledged as much, explaining that language in our early opinions could be ‘read to suggest that something less than an unambiguously conferred right’ can give rise to a cause of action under § 1983, and that ‘[t]his confusion has led some courts’ astray,” Justice Thomas explained.
Congress knows how to create private rights of action if it desires, and some federal spending laws explicitly let beneficiaries enforce them. Letting judges infer rights in federal spending laws vitiates the constitutional separation of powers and federalism that safeguard individual liberty. The only winners are the plaintiff attorneys.
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Appeared in the November 8, 2022, print edition.
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