Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

Pro se plaintiff Gary Wisner, M.D. filed a complaint alleging that defendants Dignity Health and the Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Medical Center (collectively, SJMC) falsely reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) that Wisner surrendered his clinical privileges while under criminal investigation for insurance fraud. The trial court granted a special motion to strike the complaint after concluding that Wisner’s claims arose from a protected activity and that Wisner failed to establish a probability of prevailing on the merits. Wisner contested both aspects of the trial court’s order, and he also argued the court erred by denying his motion to conduct limited discovery prior to the hearing on the anti-SLAPP motion. Finding no error, the Court of Appeal affirmed. View "Wisner v. Dignity Health" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed the judgment of the district court dismissing Calvary Chapel of Bangor's (Calvary) complaint against Maine Governor Janet Mills raising several facial and as-applied constitutional and statutory challenges to the Governor's executive orders seeking to slow the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, holding that the complaint was moot and that no mootness exception could save it.Calvary sued the Governor in federal court claiming that the Governor's orders at issue discriminated against Calvary by treating religious gatherings less favorably than other gatherings. Calvary requested a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, a permanent injunction, and a declaratory judgment. The district court denied relief and dismissed the complaint. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that this case was moot and that no exception to mootness applied. View "Calvary Chapel of Bangor v. Mills" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court reversed the order of the district court committing Appellant to the Montana State Hospital at Warm Springs for a period of up to ninety days, holding that the district court committed reversible error when it allowed a professional person to testify by telephone over Appellant's objection.The State filed a petition for Appellant's involuntary commitment due to her disorganized thinking and confusion. At a hearing on the petition, the State called Amanda Torres, a licensed clinical professional counselor, to testify by telephone due to technical difficulties with courtroom video capabilities. The district court overruled Appellant's rejection and allowed Torres to testify by telephone. Relying on Torres's testimony, the district court concluded that Appellant suffered from a mental disorder and required commitment. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the district court erroneously overruled Appellant's objection and that the court was statutorily mandated to prohibit Torres's testimony by telephone because it did not satisfy the requirement for two-way audio-video communication and because Appellant objected. View "In re S.E." on Justia Law

In 2013, Craig (age 49) executed an Illinois statutory short-form health care power of attorney, appointing his mother as his agent. In 2016, Craig was hospitalized at McFarland after being charged with burglary and found unfit to stand trial. In 2018, a McFarland psychiatrist sought to involuntarily administer psychotropic medications to Craig under the Mental Health Code, 405 ILCS 5/2-107. Craig alleged that decisions on his medical treatment rested with his agent. A psychiatrist testified that Craig was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, when he was 25 years old and had been experiencing hallucinations with symptoms of paranoia, inability to sleep, poor impulse control, hypersexuality, physical aggression, and psychomotor agitation; Craig had no understanding of his mental illness and lacked the capacity to make rational treatment decisions. She opined that the benefits of the medications outweighed the potential risks. Without treatment, Craig was unable to live outside a hospital. Craig’s 82-year-old mother declined to consent, believing that the medications caused brain damage, made Craig “like a zombie,” and made him look “like a man without a head.”The trial court granted the petition for involuntary administration of psychotropic medication for a period not to exceed 90 days. The appellate court and Illinois Supreme Court affirmed. The Mental Health Code, which includes strict standards for an order permitting involuntary administration of psychotropic medications, provides a narrow exception to an agent’s authority to make a principal’s health care decisions. View "In re Craig H." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs are a married couple who have each been deaf since early childhood. They appealed the district court’s judgment, entered following a three-day bench trial, on their claims under (1) the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), (2) Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504), (3) Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and (4) California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act (Unruh Act) against Defendant Doctors Medical Center of Modesto, Inc. (DMC), an acute care hospital. Plaintiffs alleged that DMC failed to afford them effective communication during a series of hospital stays between 2015 and 2017.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment, after a bench trial, in favor of Defendants. The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal as moot of plaintiffs’ ADA claims for injunctive relief.   As to the Section 504 Rehabilitation Act claims, the panel held that the district court properly ruled that Plaintiffs failed to show that they were denied program benefits on the basis of their disabilities because they did not show that the hospital failed in its affirmative obligation to provide the auxiliary aids necessary to afford them effective communication. The panel held that the district court did not err by failing to apply “primary consideration,” an ADA Title II rule, to the Section 504 claims, because there is no evidence that Section 504 contains an implicit requirement that a covered entity give primary consideration to the requests of the individual with disabilities when determining what types of auxiliary aids to use. Because Plaintiffs did not establish that the hospital engaged in any disability discrimination, their California Unruh Act claims also failed. View "MARK BAX, ET AL V. DOCTORS MED. CTR. OF MODESTO, ET AL" on Justia Law

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