on April 1, 2025 at 6:02 pm

ShareThe Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday in a case that, at first glance, appears to involve only a technical interpretation of the federal Medicaid Act. But the dispute has drawn widespread attention because of the context in which it came to the justices: an attempt by South Carolina to exclude Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid program because it provides abortions. Created in 1965, the federal Medicaid program provides medical care, in cooperation with the states, to more than 72 million lower-income Americans – including families, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The Medicaid Act was enacted pursuant to Congress’s power under Laws under the Constitution’s spending clause, which allows Congress to attach conditions to federal funds. Under federal law, Medicaid funds cannot generally be used for abortions. Planned Parenthood provides other medical services to its patients, both Medicaid and non-Medicaid, including gynecological and contraceptive care but also screenings for cancer, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. At two clinics in Charleston and Columbia, Planned Parenthood has tried to make it easier to lower-income patients in South Carolina to use its services – by, for example, offering same-day appointments and extended clinic hours. One of those Medicaid patients is Julie Edwards, who suffers from diabetes. She went to Planned Parenthood for birth control and says she wants to return to receive other care in the future. In 2018, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster ordered the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to bar abortion clinics from participating in the Medicaid program. McMaster explained that because money is fungible, the use of Medicaid funds by abortion clinics “results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life.” Edwards and Planned Parenthood went to federal court in South Carolina. They argued that McMaster’s order violated a provision of the Medicaid Act that allows any patient who is eligible for Medicaid to seek health care from any “qualified” provider. In a decision by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who was reportedly once on the short list to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court during the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit agreed with Edwards and Planned Parenthood that the Medicaid Act creates individual rights that can be enforced under federal civil rights laws, and it prohibited the state from excluding Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program. South Carolina – represented by the conservative advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom – appealed to the Supreme Court last June, asking the justices to decide whether Edwards and Planned Parenthood have a legal right to sue to enforce the Medicaid Act. The justices agreed in December to weigh in. In its brief at the Supreme Court, South Carolina argues that under the Supreme Court’s cases, because the Medicaid law was enacted pursuant to Congress’s spending clause power, it “must unambiguously confer individual federal rights.” The Supreme Court, it says, has made clear that this is a stringent test. The law must use words that explicitly create the right that a plaintiff seeks to enforce, and it must confer the right “directly on a class of persons that includes the plaintiff in the case.” It is noteworthy, South Carolina contends, that until now the Supreme Court has only found four provisions that clearly create privately enforceable rights. Two years ago, in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, Ind. v. Talevski, the court ruled (by a vote of 7-2) that nursing-home residents could use federal civil rights laws to enforce two provisions of the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act that clearly granted individual rights. The justices also ruled that two provisions in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, providing that “[n]o person shall,” also create privately enforceable rights. No such language, the state asserts, is present in the “any qualified provider” provision, which says only that “an individual eligible for medical assistance” “may obtain” it from a “qualified” provider”: Although that text may confer a benefit, the state acknowledges, it doesn’t say anything about a “right.” Moreover, the state continues, the provision is located in “a list labeled ‘Contents’ setting out 87 disparate items that plans must include.” By contrast, the state observes, the laws at issue in Talevski repeatedly referred to “rights” and were “listed in a bill of rights.” Indeed, another provision of the law at issue in Talevski specifically protected the “right to choose a personal attending physician” – demonstrating that Congress knows how to create the right to choose a health-care provider when it wants to. South Carolina also emphasizes that as a practical matter, the Medicaid Act focuses on the relationship between the states and the federal government, rather than on creating individual rights that would allow someone to bring a lawsuit. Congress, the state stresses, wanted to give states “substantial discretion” in implementing their Medicaid programs. By allowing individuals to sue when they disagreed with a state’s Medicaid decisions, the state argues, Planned Parenthood’s reading of the law would give that discretion to federal courts and pose the risk of “unanticipated (and expensive) lawsuits” for states to defend. In a “friend of the court” brief supporting South Carolina, the Trump administration agrees with South Carolina that Congress did not intend to create a privately enforceable right in the “any qualified provider” provision. If it had, the Trump administration posits, it would not have “bur[ied]” it “deep within” the Medicaid law and omitted the “term ‘right’ or other equally unmistakable rights-conferring language.” The Trump administration acknowledges that its position is an about-face from the one taken by the federal government in earlier litigation involving other laws, including Talevski. But the Supreme Court’s decision in Talevski, Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris explains, “has elucidated just how unmistakable and unusual rights-conferring statutes must be within the broader statutory context. After the change in Administration and in light of Talevski, the United States has concluded that” the “any qualified provider” provision does not create rights enforceable under federal civil rights laws. Adopting Planned Parenthood’s reading, she notes, could “potentially greenlight private” federal civil rights suits “to enforce a dozen or more similar provisions.” Another brief supporting South Carolina comes from the World Faith Foundation, a California-based nonprofit that describes its mission as preserving and defending the “customs, beliefs, values, and practices of religious faith and speech.” Pointing to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, the group emphasizes that the court “has explicitly returned abortion regulation to the states.” Allowing private lawsuits to enforce the “any qualified provider” provision in cases like this one, and therefore provide Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, the group says, “would sneak forbidden funding through the back door into South Carolina and other pro-life states.” In its brief at the Supreme Court, Planned Parenthood also relies on Talevski, asserting that the “any qualified provider” provision passes the test that the justices outlined in that case. The provision, the group says, contains the kind of “individual-focused, rights-creating language necessary to confer an individual right”: It explicitly refers to “individuals” and directs the state to allow each Medicaid beneficiary to receive care from any qualified provider. In doing so, Planned Parenthood insists, Congress did not simply provide Medicaid patients with a benefit, but instead recognized “an intensely personal right” that is “fundamental to patients’ autonomy and dignity.” Moreover, Planned Parenthood adds, the “any qualified provider” provision is “materially similar” to the laws in Talevski that the justices concluded did create privately enforceable rights for nursing-home residents. It doesn’t matter, Planned Parenthood explains, that the “any qualified provider” provision does not specifically use the word “rights” or provide that “no person shall” do something, as in earlier cases in which the court has agreed that the text of the laws conferred privately enforceable rights. The Supreme Court, the group emphasizes, “has repeatedly rejected a magic-words requirement.” The context and history of the “any qualified provider” provision also indicate that Congress intended to create privately enforceable rights, Planned Parenthood continues. Not only does the provision appear in both Medicare and Medicaid, the group observes, but Congress specifically enacted the Medicaid version of the provision “after States attempted to restrict Medicaid patients’ choice of providers.” And Planned Parenthood pushes back against South Carolina’s contention that allowing individuals to bring private lawsuits to enforce the “any qualified provider” provision will lead to a wave of lawsuits. They note that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit first held almost two decades ago that the “any qualified provider” provision can be privately enforced. “In the years since then, most circuits have agreed with the Sixth Circuit, and yet there has been no explosion of litigation.” A “friend of the court” brief by Medicaid beneficiaries emphasizes Planned Parenthood’s role in providing all kinds of health care that has “nothing to do with abortion,” particularly in parts of the country where lower-income patients may have few options for good primary care. Indeed, the beneficiaries write, Planned Parenthood may be “not only their provider of choice, but potentially the only source of life-saving care that meets their needs.” A brief by a group of public health organizations and scholars focuses on the “considerable impact on maternal and child health” that it says would flow from a ruling for the state. More than 50% of South Carolina’s counties “are medically underserved, and nearly two in five counties are classified as contraceptive deserts,” the group writes. Even where there are other health care providers, the group continues, “there is no evidence that they are in a position to accept a mass influx of patients who find themselves suddenly without access to the doctors and nurses they know and rely on.” A decision is expected by summer. This article was originally published at Howe on the Court. The post Supreme Court considers South Carolina’s effort to strip Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funding appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

on April 1, 2025 at 2:08 pm

ShareThe court this morning will hear arguments in a dispute over whether Americans injured in terror attacks abroad, or the family members of Americans killed in such attacks, can sue the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority in U.S. courts. Listen live. Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Tuesday morning read: GOP lawmakers take aim at anti-Trump rulings, nationwide injunctions (Justin Jouvenal, Theodoric Meyer, Marianna Sotomayor, & Clara Ence Morse, The Washington Post) Supreme Court Leans Toward Catholic Charity in Tax Case (Adam Liptak, The New York Times) Supreme Court seems ready to let religious groups opt out of unemployment compensation laws (Nina Totenberg, NPR) Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood. They are asking for the Supreme Court’s help (Maureen Groppe, USA Today) Justices Sotomayor and Jackson criticize court’s refusal to clarify criminal appeal rights (Jordan Rubin, MSNBC) Coming up: On Wednesday, April 2, the court expects to issue one or more opinions from the current term. We’ll be live at 9:45 a.m. EDT. The post The morning read for Tuesday, April 1 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

on March 31, 2025 at 8:43 pm

ShareUnited States v. Miller presents the kind of simple facts that populate law-school hypotheticals. A business is in financial distress. The shareholders (who control the business) use some of its funds to pay off their own debts, including taxes owed to the federal government. When the business files for bankruptcy, the creditors of the business justifiably complain that the shareholders should not have used the business’s money to pay off the shareholders’ personal tax liabilities. Can the Internal Revenue Service keep the money? The Supreme Court held last week that the answer is yes. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s opinion (joined by all the justices except for Justice Neil Gorsuch) presents this as a straightforward textual exercise, turning on “the interplay” between two sections of the Bankruptcy Code. The first is Section 544, which creates a federal cause of action allowing the bankrupt to recover funds it paid out before bankruptcy whenever the transfer “is voidable under applicable law.” The second is Section 106, which waives the federal government’s sovereign immunity for a long list of particular sections of the Bankruptcy Code, including Section 544. For Jackson, the key to the case is the reality that under Utah law (the applicable fraudulent conveyance statute), the creditors of the failed business could not recover from the IRS, because the IRS’s sovereign immunity would protect it from a suit under the Utah statute. Thus, she concludes, the transfer to the IRS is not “voidable under applicable law” for purposes of Section 544. Jackson explains that the text of Section 106, “read as a whole, makes clear that it … does not establish any substantive rights against the Government.” All that Section 106 does is “give courts jurisdiction to hear [Section 544] claims against the government.” It does not change “the substantive requirements of the claim itself.” Working from those premises, Jackson easily can reject the effort to “transform [Section 106] from a jurisdiction-creating provision into a liability-creating provision.” Jackson goes on to point out that her reading does not render useless the inclusion of Section 544 in the listed sections for which sovereign immunity is waived, because it would still allow creditors to invalidate improperly perfected tax liens under Section 544(a). Given the strong tradition of a narrow reading of waivers of sovereign immunity, the bankrupt cannot prevail. Context is everything here. Congress included a waiver of sovereign immunity in the Bankruptcy Code in 1978. As I’ve written elsewhere, the Supreme Court in several cases nevertheless upheld claims of sovereign immunity by state and federal governments, concluding that the statutory waiver was insufficiently specific. Congress responded in 1994 by adding to Section 106 a list of pretty much every section of the Bankruptcy Code that grants an important power to sue and recover funds from third parties. In Miller, the court essentially tells Congress, again, that it needs to do its homework better. If it actually wants to impose liability on the federal government, it will have to try even harder than it has in the past. Time will tell whether the third time will be a charm. The post Justices validate IRS’s right to retain fraudulent pre-bankruptcy tax payments appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

on March 31, 2025 at 8:27 pm

ShareThe Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in the latest chapter of the justices’ efforts to lay out rules for personal jurisdiction – whether courts have the power to hear a case against certain defendants. Tuesday’s case is a particularly high-profile dispute, and one that the federal government says has national security and foreign policy implications. At issue is whether a law enacted by Congress six years ago to allow U.S. victims of terrorist attacks to sue the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization in federal courts in the United States violates the Constitution’s guarantee of due process. The case has had a long and circuitous route to the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs are U.S. citizens injured in terrorist attacks in Israel, as well as the families of U.S. citizens killed in such attacks. They filed a lawsuit in U.S. court against the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the Palestinian people’s official representative for foreign affairs, and the Palestinian Authority, the governing body for parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows U.S. nationals to bring lawsuits to recover for injuries resulting from “an act of international terrorism.” The plaintiffs say that both bodies encouraged the attacks, including by paying the families of Palestinians killed in suicide attacks or in prison for attacks in Israel. The PLO and the PA made monthly payments to families of prisoners held in Israel for political crimes, killed in conflict, or imprisoned in Israel for terrorism — 70% of Palestinian families have one or more relatives detained in Israel. In February, President Mahmoud Abbas ended the payments and indicated that welfare payments will now be allocated based on families’ financial need. The move was seen as an overture to the United States to comply with U.S. law that would allow for foreign aid. The Palestinian Authority has been in increasing economic distress in recent years, struggling to make employees’ monthly salary payments. In 2015, a jury awarded the plaintiffs in one such case $218.5 million – which the ATA tripled, to $655.5 million. But on appeal the Supreme Court ruled that federal district courts did not have jurisdiction over either the PLO or PA. In 2019, Congress enacted the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. The law provides that the PLO and the PA “shall be deemed to have consented to personal jurisdiction” in any civil case brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act, no matter when the act of international terrorism occurred, if they make payments to the families of terrorists who injured or killed a U.S. citizen or engaged in any activities within the United States. The law carves out a few narrow exceptions to the latter criterion – for example, for conduct relating to official United Nations business or meeting with government officials. The Supreme Court sent the dispute back to the lower courts for another look in light of the new law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the lawsuit could not go forward. It reasoned that the PLO and the PA had not consented to U.S. courts exercising jurisdiction over them. Moreover, the court of appeals added, the PLO and the PA did not engage in the kind of activities from which it would be fair to infer consent, such as conduct related to litigation in the United States or the receipt of a benefit from the U.S. government. The full court of appeals, over a dissent by four judges, declined to reconsider the decision. Both the federal government, which had joined the lawsuit to defend the law’s constitutionality, and the plaintiffs came to the Supreme Court, which agreed in December to weigh in. In its brief at the Supreme Court, the federal government begins by observing that the Supreme Court has never decided whether the due process clauses in the 14th Amendment (which applies to cases brought in state courts) and the Fifth Amendment (which applies to cases brought in federal courts) impose the same limits on jurisdiction. But the law at the center of this case passes constitutional muster, the government insists, even under the more stringent test that applies to state courts. The PSJVTA, the government explains gives the PA and the PLO “a choice tailored to their unique status and vital U.S. foreign-policy and national-security interests.” They could stop payments to the families of terrorists who injured U.S. citizens, as well as activities in the United States that are not necessary for their diplomatic representation or legal representation in U.S. courts. But if they continue that conduct, the government contends, they will be deemed to have consented to lawsuits against them under the PSJVTA. The PLO and the PA, the government writes, “knowingly chose the latter option.” But in any event, the government continues, cases brought in federal courts are not subject to the same restrictions on personal jurisdiction that apply to cases in state courts. For purposes of the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, the government contends, an inquiry into personal jurisdiction inquiry focuses on a defendant’s contacts with the state that is seeking to bring it into court. But because the federal government has broader interests, such as foreign policy and trade, courts should undertake a “more flexible” inquiry that is “calibrated to the circumstances at hand.” In particular, the government suggests, courts should look at whether, “in the circumstances of the case, a federal court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction is so burdensome as to be fundamentally unfair to the defendant.” The PLO and the PA, the government notes, “have never attempted to establish that the Act is unfair in that sense.” Here, the government emphasizes, Congress believed that deeming the PLO and the PA to have consented to jurisdiction in federal courts was the best way to prevent terrorism. Such a determination is entitled to deference, it concludes. The U.S. victims and families tell the justices that the PSJVTA law provides the kind of due process that the Founding Fathers recognized as adequate. Under the law, they say, the PLO and the PA can still defend themselves in court – with an independent judge and a trial. And the law is not arbitrary: “It advances the Federal Government’s legitimate foreign-policy and national-security interests by deterring and disrupting terrorism, protecting and compensating Americans, and” providing an incentive for the PLO and the PA to “end their official program of financially rewarding terrorism.” The group next echoes the government’s suggestion that the concerns underlying limitations on personal jurisdiction in state courts – ensuring that states do not encroach on other states’ authority by hearing disputes that have little connection to the state – do not apply to jurisdiction in federal court. The Supreme Court, they write, “has repeatedly taught that federal courts can adjudicate federal cases arising from” conduct that takes place outside the United States “when Congress so provides.” The victims also point to the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway, in which the justices rejected a challenge to a Pennsylvania law that created jurisdiction through consent – specifically, out-of-state corporations were deemed to have consented to be sued in state courts when they registered as corporations in the state. The Supreme Court, the victims explain indicated that a defendant could constructively consent to personal jurisdiction by accepting a benefit in the state or by “engaging in conduct specified by law … as happened here.” Moreover, the victims add, the law in this case serves legitimate government interests – which the Pennsylvania law in Mallory did not – because it “applies only to cases involving terrorism against American victims and their families.” And in any event, the PLO and the PA did receive benefits from the United States – the “privilege of residing and conducting business in the United States — not to mention furthering their political goals at the expense of American lives.” The Palestinian Authority and the PLO denounce the PSJVTA as “the latest legislative attempt to undo an unbroken line of cases holding that” they cannot be haled into U.S. courts “for their alleged involvement in terrorist attacks in Israel and Palestine.” Courts have repeatedly held, they write, that subjecting them to suits in federal courts “would violate due process because the attacks did not target Americans, and” because the PLO and the PA do not have “other constitutionally-sufficient connections to the United States.” Moreover, they add, in decisions issued before the enactment of the PSJVTA, courts have consistently ruled that payments by the Palestinian Authority, “which occur entirely outside the United States, do not support personal jurisdiction because they are not connected to the forum or to” the plaintiffs’ claims. The PLO and the Palestinian Authority also push back against any suggestion that they consented to be sued in the United States, insisting that they had not done anything that could be interpreted as consent. They did not sign a contract agreeing to be sued in the United States, they note. And they did not accept any benefit from the federal government in exchange for being subject to suit, they continue. Nothing in the PSJVTA offers the PLO and the PA any “benefits,” they maintain. The PA ended the payment program in February, but the law subjects them to lawsuits in U.S. courts “for making payments that the United States had no power to permit or prohibit in the first place.” Moreover, they tell the justices, the United States can bar (and has barred) the PLO and the PA from operating in the country. But the provision in the law subjecting the PLO and the PA to jurisdiction based on their activities in the United States also does not confer a “benefit” on them. Under the government’s reasoning, the PLO and the PA, say, the “benefit” that they receive is the benefit of not being subject to lawsuits under the Anti-Terrorism Act. But that is “entirely circular,” they argue, and would mean that Congress could always impose jurisdiction by consent. It is also not enough, the PLO and the PA assert, that the PSJVTA may have provided them with advance notice that they would be subject to lawsuits in U.S. courts if they engaged in the conduct outlined in the law. “If due process required nothing more than notice,” they suggest, “then nothing would stop Congress from decreeing that a defendant shall be ‘deemed’ to have ‘consented’ to personal jurisdiction by engaging in any activity anywhere in the world.” Such a rule, they warn, would also increase the likelihood that other countries would enact similar laws, resulting in an increase in lawsuits against U.S. citizens and companies in foreign courts. Like the federal government, the PLO and the PA resist the victims’ contention that the PSJVTA provides the kind of due process that was required in the Founding era history. “As members of this Court have explained,” they say, “when the proponent of a historical claim that would overturn longstanding precedent admits that it is speculative, wisdom counsels against adopting that position.” And in any event, they conclude, the Supreme Court can uphold the 2nd Circuit’s ruling on the ground that the law violates the doctrine of the separation of powers by taking over the job of the courts. Specifically, they contend, the law tells courts that if the PLO or the PA engage in the activities described in the PSJVTA, they must find that the groups have consented to jurisdiction. But it is the job of the courts, rather than Congress, to determine whether a defendant has agreed to jurisdiction. And courts have already concluded, they write, that the activities of the PLO and the PA “are insufficient to support the exercise of jurisdiction under the” due process clause. This article was originally published at Howe on the Court. The post Supreme Court considers Americans’ suit against Palestinian Authority appeared first on SCOTUSblog.