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SCOTUS to nuke right to sue regarding federally funded benefits


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Advocates spoke in front of HCC Board of Trustees demanding they withdraw their SCOTUS petition to ban private lawsuits over federal safety net programs

 

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The Health & Hospital Corp. of Marion County wants the nation's high court to throw out a lawsuit over poor care at one of its nursing homes in a case that could also bar beneficiaries of safety net programs like Medicaid from suing if their rights are violated.

 

 

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This article explains the case and its potentially devastating far-reaching effects:

 

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The court will hear arguments next month in an Indiana case that could decide whether people can take legal action against states and localities if they believe their rights are violated under safety net programs, like Medicaid. Advocates for the elderly, poor and people with disabilities say the stakes are enormous.

 

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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case early next month that will determine if residents of publicly owned nursing homes that receive Medicaid funds can sue the facilities for violating their civil rights.

 

Advocates for the elderly, the poor and people with disabilities worry that the court’s decision could strip away the legal rights of millions of vulnerable Americans and lead to the shredding of the government safety net that reaches far beyond the Medicaid program.

 

"It's a very consequential case,'' said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University. "What this would do, essentially, is to shut down the courts to the poorest Americans.”

 

 

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The case, Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, Indiana v. Talevski, hasn’t received the attention that far-reaching legal battles typically draw. But the implications are enormous: at stake are judicial protections for nursing home residents in Medicaid-funded public facilities, as well as, potentially, those who rely on an array of other state-administered welfare programs funded by Congress, such as the children’s health insurance program, known as CHIP, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

 

Gorgi Talevski was 79 and suffering from dementia when he entered a county-run nursing home owned by Health and Hospital Corporation. His wife, Ivanka Talevski, filed a lawsuit alleging her husband’s rights were being violated, citing the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, a “bill of rights” for patients in nursing homes that receive Medicaid funding.

 

Ivanka Talevski’s lawsuit was brought under Section 1983 of the U.S. Legal Code, which was passed in 1871 and allows individuals to bring legal action against state or local governments for civil rights violations. 

 

An appeals court agreed that Talevski had a right to sue under Section 1983, but the Health and Hospital Corporation appealed.

 

Indiana and 16 other states filed a brief supporting the hospital corporation, arguing that private individuals who aren’t a party to the contract between the federal government and the states can’t use Section 1983 to bring their claims.

 

 

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The Arc of the United States and other disability rights organizations said removing an individual’s ability to sue under Section 1983 would leave them without a tool to enforce their rights.

 

“Enforcement of Medicaid law is therefore unlikely without Section 1983 lawsuits,” the Arc’s brief states. “Non-enforcement of Medicaid would be an especially devastating outcome for people with disabilities, who depend on that program for services that are virtually inaccessible on the private market.”

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Gorgi Talevski was 79 and suffering from dementia when he entered a county-run nursing home owned by Health and Hospital Corporation. His wife, Ivanka Talevski, filed a lawsuit alleging her husband’s rights were being violated, citing the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, a “bill of rights” for patients in nursing homes that receive Medicaid funding.

oh man, it's worse than presented here.

 

From the transcripts of the podcast 5-4 summarizing the facts of the case and other details:

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 Rhiannon: Now, I also mentioned 1983, we've talked about 1983 cases before. These are civil rights lawsuits based on a law that was passed in the early 1870s, it gave people the right to sue state officials for violating federal laws and federal rights. That's not just constitutional rights, but rights established by the federal government. You can sue a state official for violating those rights under Section 1983. So, let's talk about the facts of the case. This comes out of a nursing home in Marion County, Indiana. It's a nursing home that's run by the state, this is not a private facility. So Gorgi Talevski lived at this nursing home and he had dementia. This facility gave him basically a bevy of unnecessary medication just to sedate him, to restrain him all the time. And then, they also transferred Mr. Talevski to another facility far from his family without any notice, they didn't tell anybody and they didn't get their consent.
 

More, in case you're interested:

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0:04:30.5 Rhiannon: Now, pursuant to Medicaid and Congress's spending power, there's a law called the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, which establishes the rights of residents of nursing homes that receive Medicaid funding. So, FNHRA, the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act says that you can't give unnecessary or dangerous medication to nursing home residents just like as a consequence or just for convenience. And it also says that nursing home residents can't be moved to different facilities without notice and without using the proper procedure mandated by law. So Mr. Talevski actually passed away and his family sued on his behalf through his estate saying, "Look, you clearly violated the FNHRA, you violated Mr. Talevski's rights that these federal laws establish, so you as the state provider we can sue you under 1983, state official violating rights under federal law." So what is really sort of ominous and deeply concerning about the case is what the state of Indiana is arguing here. They're arguing that actually there is no cause of action, no option to sue under 1983 because of two things.

[...]

0:07:29.7 Hannah Mullen: Yeah, the paragraphs, I wrote in prose about this case are three pages. But I think it's hard to overstate on first-cut explanation how surface-level bananas the argument is here. Just when you sort of walk through the statutory texted issue. Section 1983 provides a cause of action against any person who under Color of Law deprives another of any, "rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution and, in brackets, federal laws." So, if a state actor violates your rights that are secured by a federal law, Section 1983 is your cause of action.

[...]

 Indiana's claim, which is very hotly disputed in the briefs and should not be taken at face value, Indiana's claim is that, well, under the common law rule at the time as applied to Contract Law, third-party beneficiaries, so that's people who are not parties to a contract, but somebody else who is getting the benefit of that contractual relationship, if that contract was breached by one of the parties, that third party, non-party to the contract, couldn't sue to enforce the contract. 

[...]

0:09:58.3 Peter: Well, this is the primary strategy of conservatives right now, to just... Like, you go back in time until you find some bullshit reason in historical legal analysis, why their position might be correct and then you stop there.

[...]

The argument is, well, I looked at this contracts Hornbook from 1871, and it told me that third-party beneficiaries can't sue. So, we should just assume, even though there is absolutely nothing in the text of Section 1983 and basically no indication that Congress actually was thinking about third-party beneficiaries Contract Law, modern Spending Clause legislation wasn't even a thing yet, and they're trying to import that supposed background principle into the interpretation of 1983.

 

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