Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South AtlanticWhich, as the Supreme Court announced on Wednesday it will hear, is not a difficult case.
question in Kerr A federal law requiring state Medicaid programs to guarantee that “any person eligible for medical assistance” can receive that care Any institution, organization, community pharmacy or individual, qualified to perform the required service or services“In effect, Medicaid allows patients to choose any doctor qualified to perform the services they seek
After reading this statutory language, you’re probably wondering why this legal dispute sparked a lawsuit in the first place — the law, after all, is perfectly clear that “any” Medicaid patient is allowed to choose “any” person who qualifies for their benefits. Careful but there are two reasons, one legal and one political, that explain Kerr Controversial enough to make it to the Supreme Court.
The first reason is that the Supreme Court’s rules on when someone can sue to enforce the provisions of federal Medicaid law are somewhat complicated, though not complicated enough to deny Medicaid patients the right to choose their health provider. The second, more significant, reason is that the case involved Planned Parenthood, and so a handful of outside judges allowed anti-abortion politics to trump clearly written federal law.
South Carolina is one of several states that tried to exclude Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program, effectively barring Medicaid patients from receiving care at reputable reproductive health care facilities. In 2018, Republican Governor Henry McMaster issued an executive order Banning “abortion clinics”. From paying to provide care to Medicaid patients. (Although the Supreme Court allowed states to ban abortions in 2022, South Carolina still does Some allow abortions up to the sixth week of pregnancy.)
Shortly after McMaster issued the order, both a South Carolina affiliate of Planned Parenthood and a Planned Parenthood patient sued, pointing to federal laws that give Medicaid patients the right to choose their health providers. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, a federal appeals court overseeing North Carolina, Barbar has ruled that these plaintiffs are correct — Federal law does exactly what its plain text says.
Most federal appeals courts have ruled similarly when other states have promulgated rules similar to those in McMaster. But two external circuits, the fifth And the eighthdid not Notably, both the Fifth and Eighth Circuit decisions were handed down before the Supreme Court decision. Health & Hospital Corp. v. Talevski (2023), an important decision that clarified the right of Medicaid patients to bring federal lawsuits, cut against the reasoning of the Fifth and Eighth Circuits.
In any case, it is hard to imagine such a circuit split if such a straightforward legal dispute did not involve the controversial question of abortion. It is also possible that the Supreme Court has taken Kerr case only to reaffirm its decision Talevsky And contrast the two courts that created this divide.
The whole point of having a Supreme Court at the top of the federal judiciary is to maintain uniformity in federal law — an act of Congress should mean the same thing in South Carolina as it does in Texas — so the justices often step in. Address legal questions that divide federal appeals courts.
Nevertheless, this case involves abortion. Republicans have a 6-3 supermajority on the Supreme Court. And five members of that majority have a history of reading laws in absurd ways to curtail abortion rights. So there is at least some risk that the courts could rule out the right of Medicaid patients to choose their own health providers.
What are the specific legal issues at the center? Kerr?
Arguably the most important federal civil rights law is a provision that “Section 1983,” which allows state officials to sue in federal court if they deprive someone of “any right, privilege, or immunity protected by the Constitution or by law.” Without this law, those whose constitutional or federal statutory rights are violated are often There is no way, because they will be unable to bring a case to vindicate those rights.
Notably, however, Section 1983 does not allow anyone to sue challenging a violation of any federal law. As the Supreme Court has said Blessing vs. Freestone (1997), “A plaintiff must allege a violation of Federal the rightNot just federal violations the law” and courts have created a framework that governs whether federal laws create private rights that can be enforced through private litigation.
Yet, while this framework sometimes creates uncertainty as to which federal statutes may trigger such cases, the issue Kerr Straight As recently reaffirmed by the Court TalevskyThe key question is whether a federal law “Phrases in terms of beneficiaries“And it contains ‘entitlement-creating,’ person-centered language with an ‘obscure focus on privileged classes.’
Thus, for example, a hypothetical federal statute that provides that “no state may deny the right to play golf to anyone who owns a golf club” may be enforced by federal litigation, because the statute’s language focuses on the people who benefit from it. are (who own golf clubs). A statute stating that “States shall not impede the enjoyment of the game of golf,” by contrast, would not permit individual litigation because the statutory language does not even specify which persons are intended to benefit from the statute.
With this framework in mind, consider At its heart is statutory language Kerr the case:
A state plan for medical assistance must … provide … Any person eligible for medical assistance (including medicine) can receive such assistance From any institution, body, community pharmacy or individual, qualified to perform the required service or services (an organization that provides such services or arranges for their availability, on a prepayment basis), who undertakes to provide him such as services.
The language is full of “person-centric language” with an “unrelenting focus on the privileged class,” the court said. Talevsky. It provides a right to “any person” eligible for medical benefits. It says these people “may receive” medical care from the provider of their choice. And it ends with a pronoun (“his”), which refers to those who benefit from the law.
All of which is a long way to go if the courts follow the existing law, including the recently announced rules TalevskyThen it shall render judgment in favor of the plaintiffs Kerr. But it’s unlikely that the case would have reached the Supreme Court in the first place — or that any appeals court would have read this particular provision of the Medicaid law to deny similar plaintiffs the right to sue — if the case hadn’t become politically charged. Controversial issues like abortion.
