Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

The Ninth Circuit reversed in part and vacated in part the district court’s grant of Defendants’ motion to dismiss, and remanded for further proceedings, in an action in which federally-qualified health centers operating in Arizona and their membership organization alleged that the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, which administers Arizona’s Medicaid program, and its director violated 42 U.S.C. Section 1396a(bb) and binding Ninth Circuit precedent by failing or refusing to reimburse Plaintiffs for the services of dentists, podiatrists, optometrists, and chiropractors.   First, the panel held that the court’s precedent in California Ass’n of Rural Health Clinics v. Douglas (“Douglas”), 738 F.3d 1007 (9th Cir. 2013), established that FQHC services are a mandatory benefit under Section 1396d(a)(2)(C) for which Plaintiffs have a right to reimbursement under Section 1396a(bb) that is enforceable under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983. The panel rejected Defendants’ interpretation of Section 1396d(a)(2)(C)’s phrase “which are otherwise included in the plan” as applying to both the phrases “FQHC services” and “other ambulatory services offered by a [FQHC.]” The panel, therefore, rejected Defendants’ assertion that Section 1396d(a)(2)(C) only required states to cover FQHC services that are included in the state Medicaid plan.   The panel recognized that Douglas held that the mandatory benefit of “FQHC services” under § 1396d(a)(2)(C) includes “services furnished by . . . dentists, podiatrists, optometrists, and chiropractors” as well as doctors of medicine and osteopathy. The panel held that Arizona’s categorical exclusion of adult chiropractic services violated the unambiguous text of the Medicaid Act as interpreted in Douglas. View "AACHC V. AHCCCS" on Justia Law

Illinois, Cook County Health and Hospitals System, Chicago, and Naperville each issued an order, policy, or directive requiring certain employees to vaccinate or regularly test for COVID-19. Employees who failed to comply would be subject to disciplinary action, including possible termination. Three district judges denied motions for preliminary injunctions against those vaccine mandates.Consolidating the appeals, the Seventh Circuit affirmed. Rejecting a claim that the regulations violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to substantive due process by interfering with their rights to bodily autonomy and privacy, the court stated that the plaintiffs failed to provide facts sufficient to show that the challenged mandates abridge a fundamental right and did not provide a textual or historical argument for their constitutional interpretation. The district judge properly applied the rational basis standard. The plaintiffs established the efficacy of natural immunity and pointed out some uncertainties associated with the COVID-19 vaccines but did not establish that the governments lack a “reasonably conceivable state of facts” to support their policies. Without specifying the process that was due, how it was withheld, and evidence for the alleged protected interest, the plaintiffs’ procedural due process claims fail. The court also rejected free exercise claims and claims under the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. View "Troogstad v. City of Chicago" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, a transgender youth, their parents, and two healthcare professionals, sought to enjoin Arkansas Act 626, which prohibits healthcare professionals from providing gender transition procedures to any individual under the age of 18 or from referring any such individual to any healthcare professional for gender transition procedures. The district court enjoined the Act, and the State appealed.The Eighth Circuit held that because a minor's sex at birth determines whether or not the minor can receive certain types of medical care under the law, Act 626 discriminates on the basis of sex. Thus, to be valid, the Act must be supported by an exceedingly persuasive justification. The Eighth Circuit determined that the Act prohibits medical treatment that conforms with the recognized standard of care for adolescent gender dysphoria and that the purpose of the Act is not to ban a treatment but to ban an outcome the State deems undesirable. Thus, the district court did not err in granting an injunction. View "Dylan Brandt v. Leslie Rutledge" on Justia Law

In 2020, California and Santa Clara County issued public health orders intended to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, including orders restricting indoor gatherings and requiring face coverings, social distancing, and submission of a social distancing protocol by businesses, including churches. Calvary Chapel failed to comply with those orders. On November 2, 2020, the trial court issued a temporary restraining order, followed by a November 24 modified TRO, and a preliminary injunction that enjoined Calvary from holding indoor gatherings that did not comply with the restrictions on indoor gatherings and requirements that participants wear face coverings and social distance. Calvary was also enjoined from operating without submitting a social distancing protocol. Calvary violated the orders, failing to comply with any of the public health orders.The government sought an order of contempt, which the trial court issued on December 17, 2020, ordering Calvary and its pastors to pay monetary sanctions (Code of Civil Procedure sections 177.51 and 1218(a)). The court of appeal annulled the contempt orders and reversed the sanctions. The temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions are facially unconstitutional under the recent guidance of the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion in the context of public health orders that impact religious practice. View "People v. Calvary Chapel San Jose" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court affirmed the district court's grant of a preliminary injunction temporarily enjoining the implementation of three laws the Legislature enacted in 2021 that regulate or restrict abortion services, holding that there was no error of law or manifest abuse of discretion.In 2021, the Montana Legislature passed into law and the governor signed into law bills regulating or restricting abortions services and providing for various criminal penalties and civil remedies. The district court granted a preliminary injunction, finding that Plaintiffs made a prima facie showing that the challenged laws violated their rights under the Montana Constitution and determining that Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable injury if the challenged laws took effect. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that either ground on which the district court granted a preliminary injunction would have been sufficient to justify relief. View "Planned Parenthood of Montana v. State" on Justia Law

In this case arising out of a child welfare investigation, the Seventh Circuit vacated the judgment of the district court entering summary judgment in favor of Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) case workers on the grounds of qualified immunity, holding that the facts were too disputed to allow the Court to reach any legal conclusions with confidence.When DCS learned from a social worker that Plaintiffs may not have been providing their infant daughter prescribed medication to control epileptic seizures DCS case workers took the child to the hospital for a blood draw to clarify whether that was so. The results showed that the infant had started the prescription a few days earlier. Plaintiffs filed a complaint under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that the investigation and demand for a blood test violated their constitutional rights as parents under the Fourteenth Amendment and their daughter's rights under the Fourth Amendment. The district court entered summary judgment for the DCS defendants on the grounds of qualified immunity. The Seventh Circuit vacated the summary judgment and remanded the case, holding that the facts were so contested as to limit what the Court could do on appeal. View "Jerger v. Blaize" on Justia Law

Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act provides that “[e]xcept in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or knowingly perform . . . or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational age of the unborn human being has been determined to be greater than fifteen (15) weeks.” The Fifth Circuit affirmed an injunction, prohibiting enforcement of the Act.The Supreme Court reversed, overruling its own precedent. The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; the authority to regulate abortion belongs to state representatives. Citing the “faulty historical analysis” in Roe v. Wade, the justices concluded that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition; regulations and prohibitions of abortion are governed by the same “rational basis” standard of review as other health and safety measures. The justices analyzed “great common-law authorities,” concerning the historical understanding of ordered liberty. “Attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s ‘concept of existence’ … could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like.”Noting “the critical moral question posed by abortion,” the justices compared their decision to Brown v. Board of Education in overruling Plessy v. Ferguson, which “was also egregiously wrong.” Roe conflated the right to shield information from disclosure and the right to make and implement important personal decisions without governmental interference and produced a scheme that "looked like legislation," including a “glaring deficiency” in failing to justify the distinction it drew between pre- and post-viability abortions. The subsequently-described “undue burden” test is unworkable in defining a line between permissible and unconstitutional restrictions. Traditional reliance interests are not implicated because getting an abortion is generally an “unplanned activity,” and “reproductive planning could take virtually immediate account of any sudden restoration of state authority to ban abortions.” The Court emphasized that nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act is supported by the Mississippi Legislature’s specific findings, which include the State’s asserted interest in “protecting the life of the unborn.” View "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" on Justia Law

St. Vincent Hospital adopted a COVID-19 vaccine requirement. Employees had until November 12, 2021 to get vaccinated unless they received a medical or religious exemption. In reviewing exemption requests, St. Vincent considered the employee’s position and amount of contact with others, the current health and safety risk posed by COVID, and the cost and effectiveness of other safety protocols. Dr. Halczenko treated gravely ill children, including those suffering from or at risk of organ failure.St. Vincent denied Halczenko’s request for religious accommodation on the ground that “providing an exemption to a Pediatric Intensivist working with acutely ill pediatric patients poses more than a de minim[i]s burden to the hospital because the vaccine provides an additional level of protection in mitigating the risk associated with COVID.” Halczenko and four other St. Vincent employees filed an EEOC complaint. The others—a nurse practitioner and three nurses, including two in the pediatric ICU—were granted religious accommodations. St. Vincent terminated Halczenko’s employment. Halczenko attributes his lack of success in finding new work to his non-compete agreement with St. Vincent, his preference not to move his family, and the limited demand for an unvaccinated physician in his specialty. In a purported class action, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial of preliminary relief, concluding that Halczenko had shown neither irreparable harm nor an inadequate remedy at law. View "Halczenko v. Ascension Health, Inc." on Justia Law

The Supreme Court held that the Iowa Constitution is not the source of a fundamental right to an abortion necessitating a strict scrutiny standard of review for regulations affecting that right.In Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Iowa Board of Medicine (PPH I), 865 N.W.2d 252 (Iowa 2015), the Supreme Court applied the federal undue burden test established in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), under the Iowa Constitution. In Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v. Reynolds (PPH II), 915 N.W.2d 206, (Iowa 2018), the Supreme Court rejected the undue burden test and found that the due process clause of the Iowa Constitution protected abortion as a fundamental right. In 2020, the general assembly added a mandatory 24-hour waiting period for abortion to pending legislation limiting courts' ability to withdraw life-sustaining procedures. Planned Parenthood successfully sued in district court to block the statute from taking effect. The district court granted summary judgment for Planned Parenthood. The Supreme Court reversed, holding (1) PPH II is overruled; and (2) therefore, the Casey undue burden test applied in PPH I remains the governing standard. View "Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Reynolds ex rel. State" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals certified a question of law to the Oregon Supreme Court. The question related to the applicability of Oregon’s anti- discrimination laws to a private contractor that provided healthcare services within a jail. Plaintiff filed a lawsuit against defendant, a private entity that contracted with the Clackamas County Jail to provide healthcare services to incarcerated persons, alleging that defendant had discriminated against him on the basis of disability, in violation of ORS 659A.142(4). The district court held that defendant was not a place of public accommodation, as defined by ORS 659A.400. The Ninth Circuit asked the Supreme Court to help it to resolve plaintiff’s appeal of the dismissal of his state law claim: “Is a private contractor providing healthcare services at a county jail a ‘place of public accommodation’ within the meaning of Oregon Revised Statutes § 659A.400 and subject to liability under § 659A.142?” The Supreme Court responded in the affirmative. View "Abraham v. Corizon Health, Inc." on Justia Law