FEDERAL NURSING HOME REFORM ACT-1983 ACTION

– Health & Hosp. Corp. v. Talevski, 2023 U.S. LEXIS 2421 (S. Ct. June 8, 2023) (Jackson, J.). The Federal Nursing Home Reform Act (FNHRA or Act) ensures that nursing homes that receive Medicaid funding respect and protect their residents’ health, safety, and dignity. Provisions of the FNHRA refer to rights of nursing-home residents to be free from unnecessary physical or chemical restraints and to be discharged or transferred only when certain preconditions are satisfied. This case is about these particular provisions and whether nursing-home residents can seek to vindicate those FNHRA rights in court. Respondent Ivanka Talevski maintains that she can enforce the rights these particular FNHRA provisions describe via 42 U. S. C. §1983, which, since the 1870s, has 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.” Petitioners insist that respondent is wrong about being able to rely on §1983 in this context, for two independent reasons. First, petitioners urge us to discard our longstanding recognition that §1983’s unqualified reference to “laws” “means what it says,” Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1, 4, 100 S. Ct. 2502, 65 L. Ed. 2d 555 (1980), and to rule instead that §1983 contains an implicit carveout for laws that Congress enacts via its spending power—a holding that, according to petitioners, would mean that §1983 could not be used to enforce any rights the FNHRA purports to recognize. In the alternative, petitioners point to our established methods for determining whether a statutory provision creates a §1983-enforceable right and maintain that these FNHRA provisions do not create rights that nursing-home residents can enforce via §1983. We reject both propositions. “Laws” means “laws,” no less today than in the 1870s, and nothing in petitioners’ appeal to Reconstruction-era contract law shows otherwise. Consequently, as we have previously held, §1983 can presumptively be used to enforce unambiguously conferred federal individual rights, unless a private right of action under §1983 would thwart any enforcement mechanism that the rights-creating statute contains for protection of the rights it has created. Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Comm., 555 U. S. 246, 253-255, 129 S. Ct. 788, 172 L. Ed. 2d 582 (2009); Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U. S. 273, 284, 122 S. Ct. 2268, 153 L. Ed. 2d 309, and n. 4 (2002). We hold that the two FNHRA provisions at issue here do unambiguously create §1983-enforceable rights. And we discern no incompatibility between private enforcement under §1983 and the statutory scheme that Congress has devised for the protection of those rights. Accordingly, we affirm the lower court’s judgment that respondent’s §1983 action can proceed in court.