Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski

by Supreme Court of the United States

Note: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

HEALTH AND HOSPITAL CORPORATION OF MARION COUNTY ET AL. v. TALEVSKI, AS PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF TALEVSKI
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT
No. 21–806. Argued November 8, 2022—Decided June 8, 2023

After Gorgi Talevski’s move to a nursing home in 2016 proved problematic, Talevski (through his wife Ivanka) brought an action under 42 U. S. C. §1983 against a county-owned nursing home and its agents (collectively, HHC), claiming that HHC’s treatment of Talevski violated rights guaranteed him under the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act (FNHRA). The District Court granted HHC’s subsequent motion to dismiss Talevski’s complaint, reasoning that no plaintiff can enforce provisions of the FNHRA via §1983. The Seventh Circuit reversed, concluding that the rights referred to in two FNHRA provisions invoked by Talevski—the right to be free from unnecessary chemical restraints, see §1396r(c)(1)(A)(ii), and rights to be discharged or transferred only when certain preconditions are met, see §1396r(c)—“unambiguously confer individually enforceable rights on nursing-home residents,” making those rights presumptively enforceable via §1983. 6 F. 4th 713, 720. The Seventh Circuit further found nothing in the FNHRA to indicate congressional intent to foreclose §1983 enforcement.

Held: The FNHRA provisions at issue unambiguously create §1983-enforceable rights, and the Court discerns no incompatibility between private enforcement under §1983 and the remedial scheme that Congress devised. Pp. 5–23.

(a) Section 1983 has, since the 1870s, provided an express cause of action to any person deprived (by someone acting under color of state law) of “any rights … secured by the Constitution and laws.” The Court has long refused to read §1983’s unmodified term “laws” to mean only some of the laws. Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1, 6. Looking to history, HHC attempts to sow doubt about §1983’s textually unqualified sweep, and proffers a Spending Clause-based argument to narrow §1983’s meaning. But a fuller picture of the relevant history lends HHC no aid.

The Court is unpersuaded by HHC’s argument that, because Congress seems to have enacted the FNHRA pursuant to the Spending Clause, Talevski cannot invoke §1983 to vindicate rights recognized by the FNHRA. HHC starts with the Court’s observation that federal legislation premised on the Spending Clause power is “much in the nature of a contract,” Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 17. From there, HHC argues that Spending Clause statutes may not be enforced via §1983 because contracts were not generally enforceable by third-party beneficiaries at when §1983 was enacted in the 1870s. The Court rejects HHC’s argument. First, while the Court has reasoned that Congress’s failure to displace firmly rooted common-law principles generally indicates that it incorporated those established principles into §1983, Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U. S. 158, 163–164, HHC’s key common-law plank here—that third-party beneficiaries could not sue to enforce contractual obligations during the relevant time—is, at a minimum, contestable. “[S]omething more than ‘ambiguous historical evidence’ is required [to] ‘flatly overrule a number of major decisions of this Court,’ ” Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___. Second, because “[t]here is no doubt that the cause of action created by §1983 is, and was always regarded as, a tort claim,” Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes at Monterey, Ltd., 526 U. S. 687, 727 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), HHC’s focus on 1870s law governing third-party-beneficiary suits in contract is perplexing, and HHC offers no reason those principles should be read to displace the plain scope of “laws” in §1983. Pp. 5–10.

(b) Under the Court’s precedent, the FNHRA provisions at issue here unambiguously confer individual federal rights enforceable under §1983, and the Court discerns no intent by Congress in FNHRA to preclude private enforcement of these rights under §1983. Pp. 11–23.

(1) Although federal statutes have the potential to create §1983-enforceable rights, they do so under this Court’s precedents only when the statute unambiguously confers those rights. The Court has recognized that the typical remedy for noncompliance with a federal statute enacted pursuant to the Spending Clause is not a private cause of action for noncompliance but rather termination of funds to the State. See Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U. S. 273, 280. The parties here thus dispute whether this is the atypical case; that is, whether the unnecessary-restraint and predischarge-notice provisions of the FNHRA “unambiguously confe[r]” individual rights, making those rights “presumptively enforceable” under §1983. Id., at 283–284.

Gonzaga sets forth the Court’s established method for ascertaining unambiguous conferral. Courts must employ traditional tools of statutory construction to assess whether Congress has “unambiguously conferred” “individual rights upon a class of beneficiaries” to which the plaintiff belongs. Id., at 283, 285–286. Notably, it must be determined that “Congress intended to create a federal right” for the identified class, not merely that the plaintiffs fall “within the general zone of interest that the statute is intended to protect.” Id., at 283 (emphasis deleted). The test for unambiguous conferral is satisfied where the provision in question is “ ‘phrased in terms of the persons benefited’ ” and contains “rights-creating,” individual-centric language with an “ ‘unmistakable focus on the benefited class.’ ” Id., at 284, 287 (emphasis deleted). If a statutory provision surmounts this significant hurdle, it “secures” individual rights that are deemed “presumptively enforceable” under §1983. Id., at 284.

The unnecessary-restraint and predischarge-notice provisions in FNHRA that Talevski’s complaint invokes meet this test. The FNHRA lays out a litany of statutory “[r]equirements relating to residents’ rights,” §1396r(c). The unnecessary-restraint provision requires nursing facilities to “protect and promote” residents’ “right to be free from … any physical or chemical restraints … not required to treat the resident’s medical symptoms.” §1396r(c)(1)(A)(ii). The predischarge-notice provision imposes preconditions that a nursing facility must meet to “transfer or discharge [a] resident.” §§1396r(c)(2)(A)–(B). Both provisions reside in §1396r(c), which expressly concerns “[r]equirements relating to residents’ rights.” Ibid. (emphasis added). This framing is indicative of an individual “rights-creating” focus. Gonzaga, 536 U. S., at 284. That these two provisions also establish who must comply with these statutory rights (namely, the Medicaid-participant nursing homes) does not dispel the statute’s focus on the nursing-home residents, i.e., the benefited class. The provisions use clear “rights-creating language,” speak “ ‘in terms of the persons benefited,’ ” and have an “ ‘unmistakable focus on the benefited class.’ ” Id., at 284, 287, 290 (emphasis deleted). Thus, they satisfy Gonzaga’s stringent standard, and the rights they recognize are presumptively enforceable under §1983. Pp. 11–17.

(2) Even if a statutory provision unambiguously secures rights, a defendant “may defeat [the] presumption by demonstrating that Congress did not intend” that §1983 be available to enforce those rights. Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U. S. 113, 120. Evidence of such intent may be found expressly in the statute creating the right, or implicitly, by creating “a ‘comprehensive enforcement scheme that is incompatible with individual enforcement under §1983,” ibid. Here, the Court finds evidence of neither. The FNHRA establishes a detailed administrative scheme for inspections of nursing facilities, see §1396r(g), and authorizes governments to sanction and correct noncompliant facilities, see §1396r(h). But the statute lacks any indicia of congressional intent to preclude §1983 enforcement, such as an express private judicial right of action or any other provision that might signify that intent. HHC focuses on comprehensiveness of FNHRA’s enforcement mechanisms, but implicit preclusion is shown only by a “ ‘comprehensive enforcement scheme that is incompatible with individual enforcement under §1983.’ ” Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Comm., 555 U. S. 246, 252 (emphasis added). The Court’s prior cases finding implicit preclusion involved statutes where private enforcement under §1983 would have thwarted Congress’s scheme by circumventing the statutes’ presuit procedures, or by giving plaintiffs access to tangible benefits otherwise unavailable under the statutes construed. HHC has identified no equivalent sign of incompatibility in the FNHRA, which lacks a private judicial right of action, a private federal administrative remedy, or any “carefu[l]” congressional “tailor[ing],” Fitzgerald, 555 U. S., at 255, that §1983 actions would “distort,” Rancho Palos Verdes, 544 U. S., at 127. Finally, the Court rejects any speculation that because Congress knew most nursing homes are private entities not subject to suit under §1983, the FNHRA’s remedial scheme “necessarily reflects Congress’s judgment that these administrative enforcement mechanisms appropriately protect the rights the statute confers,” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 31. The focus in the implicit-preclusion inquiry remains whether something in the FNHRA has foreclosed §1983’s “genera[l]” availability as “a remedy for the vindication of rights secured by federal statutes.” Gonzaga, 536 U. S., at 284. The Court sees no such sign, much less a license for the Court to construct and impute to Congress an intent that the FNHRA does not embody. Pp. 17–23.

6 F. 4th 713, affirmed.

Jackson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Gorsuch, J., filed a concurring opinion. Barrett, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas, J., joined.

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