SCOTUS To Decide If Supremacy Clause Reigns Supreme

[angelatc]

Hearing the case today. http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/01/ar...ption-actions/

.....the Court will hear arguments in Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center. The specific dispute in the case is whether the state’s Medicaid reimbursements should be invalidated under a provision of federal law, 42 U.S.C. § 1396a(a)(30)(A). But the question underlying that dispute has implications far beyond Medicaid.

That underlying question is whether the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution gives plaintiffs a cause of action to enjoin state action as preempted, even when the preempting statute does not. The case exposes a tension between the two very different ways the Court has viewed causes of action in the constitutional and statutory contexts, and it is unclear which one will prevail.

As a point of background, the Court had granted certiorari on this question three terms earlier, in another Medicaid case, Douglas v. Independent Living Center. But agency developments while the case was pending caused a majority of the Court to remand the case without deciding the core legal question. Four Justices, in a dissent written by Chief Justice John Roberts, would have ruled that there was no cause of action. That dissent looms large over tomorrow’s arguments. The state will prevail if those four Justices adhere to their views and persuade a fifth to join them.

My guess is that they will fail us yet again and side with the statute over the constitution.

In this case, the plaintiffs are Medicaid providers who argue that recent changes to Idaho’s Medicaid reimbursement rates conflict with the requirements of the Medicaid statute, and therefore also violate the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which says that federal law preempts contrary state law. The claim has both a statutory element and a constitutional element. This raises the question whether it should be analogized to the statutory cause-of-action cases or the constitutional ones.

Although the entire Medicaid program is unconstitutional if you want to get right down to it.

[Ronin Truth]

If not, is it really a Supremacy Clause?

[ClydeCoulter]

If not, is it really a Supremacy Clause?

Yes, when in pursuance of the powers granted by the Constitution to the federal government. But, only then.

[Ronin Truth]

Yes, when in pursuance of the powers granted by the Constitution to the federal government. But, only then.

Which faux fabricated imaginary powers are those, and by whose bogus illegal immoral Federalist authority?