Fall Cases Before the Supreme Court

FALL CASES BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to alert my colleagues to an important set of cases that will be heard by the Supreme Court this fall. The cases--consolidated under the caption Maxwell-Jolly v. Independent Living Center--concern the ability of Americans to assert their constitutional rights in court. The issue before the Court is important not just to the parties involved but to the effective functioning of our constitutional system.

The cases come to the Court out of California. In 2008, the State announced a plan to sharply reduce the reimbursements paid to medical providers under Medi-Cal, the State's Medicaid program. A broad range of parties--including pharmacies, medical clinics, hospitals, doctors, health care providers, senior citizens' groups, and Medicaid beneficiaries--brought suit asking for an injunction to stop the change from going into effect. They are not looking for money, just an order requiring California to follow Federal law.

They argued that the California plan violated--and was preempted by--the Federal Medicaid statute. In particular, they contended that the plan

failed to ``assure that payments are consistent with efficiency, economy, and quality of care and are sufficient to enlist enough providers so that care and services are available . . . at least to the extent that such care and services are available to the general population,'' as required by 42 U.S.C.  1396a(a)(30)(A). In other words, they took California to court to make the State obey Federal law and ensure patients have access to the Medicaid benefits required by Congress.

The court of appeals agreed with the plaintiffs' claims that the California plan was preempted by Federal law. But that wasn't the end of it. The Supreme Court decided to review the case. Denying review on the underlying issue of whether California's action is, in fact, preempted by Federal law, the Court has taken up the question whether the parties should be allowed to assert that California's plan is unconstitutional. The California attorney general has argued that they should not, claiming that private parties cannot have a day in court to raise a preemption claim, regardless whether the State's action is illegal under Federal law.

This case will be significant for our country, and Constitution, for years to come.

As my colleagues know, it is foundational to our system of government that States must comply with duly enacted laws of this Congress. The supremacy clause, in article VI of the Constitution, makes clear that the Constitution and ``the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof ..... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.''

Our carefully balanced Federal system, designed by the Framers, would fall apart without the supremacy clause. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 44, without that clause we would be left ``a system of government founded on an inversion of the fundamental principles of all government; it would have seen the authority of the whole society every where subordinate to the authority of the parts; it would have seen a monster, in which the head was under the direction of the members.'' For this reason, the Supreme Court has enforced the supremacy clause since 1796, striking down State measures incompatible with Federal law.

It has previously been widely accepted in the courts of appeals, legal treatises, and filings by the United States--that the American people can go to court to protect themselves from preempted State law.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly allowed big corporations to argue in court that State actions are preempted by Federal laws and regulations. To take one example, in Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Brown, 2008, business interests sued to enjoin enforcement of a California law that prohibited employers in that State from spending State funds to deter union organizing. The Supreme Court held that the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, preempted the California law. It didn't tell the corporation that it could not assert this argument in the first place. So too, in Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transport Association, 2008, a group of transport carrier associations brought suit to argue that a Maine statute regulating tobacco delivery in order to protect minors was preempted by Federal law. Again, the Supreme Court found that the State law was preempted, striking it down without prohibiting the corporate interests from making their argument in court. And in Watters v. Wachovia Bank, 2007, the Court allowed a big national bank to argue that Federal law preempted Michigan's State banking regulations, once again without denying the corporate interest the chance to raise such an argument in court.

Now is not the time to inhibit the supremacy clause and preclude regular Americans from having their Federal rights enforced in court, particularly when that privilege has been respected for corporations.

If the Court does take that step, it will create a legal loophole that invites states to ignore Federal law, and weaken the supremacy clause. It will put Americans at risk, weakening hard-won statutory protections. Most important, it will warp the carefully balanced Federal system that has served us so well through the centuries.

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