The Supreme Court allows Texas to empower complete strangers — legal vigilantes — to sue anyone, even a taxi driver, who helps a woman get an abortion.
Now conservative justices obsessively hung up on states’ rights, and eager to overturn precedents, are considering a case pushed by Republican attorney generals that may decide recipients of federal assistance programs can’t sue states for violating their civil rights.
The Medicaid program, which relies on federal money but is administered by states, pays for two-thirds of America’s nursing care. That’s because most elderly people in nursing homes either can’t pay their own way, or quickly go through their personal resources. Nursing homes couldn’t operate without that federal money.
Nursing homes are also a primary source of elder neglect and abuse. State regulatory oversight often is spotty and inadequate. Families being able to sue providers for bad care or mistreatment keeps them in line.
This right to sue has been settled law for decades, but like Lucy’s football, the Supreme Court may yank it away — and that has families and advocates alarmed. Why else would they revisit an issue long considered settled?
The case originated in Indiana, where the state owns many nursing homes, and involves a deceased Medicaid patient’s family suing one of those nursing homes. Read story here.