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10 

HEALTH AND HOSPITAL CORPORATION OF MARION 
CTY. v. TALEVSKI 
THOMAS, J., dissenting 

Congress’  regulatory  powers.  Rather,  as  the  Court  ob-
served in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halder-
man,  451  U. S.  1  (1981),  “legislation  enacted  pursuant  to
the  spending  power  is  much  in  the  nature  of  a  contract.” 
Id., at 17.  A federal statute imposing conditions upon the 
receipt  of  federal  funding  does  not  enact  those  conditions
with “the obligation of law”; it merely “proposes them as the 
terms  of  a  contractual  promise.”    Hamburger  132.  Such 
spending provisions “merely stipulate what the government 
expects  from  recipients  if  it  is  to  pay  them  or,  later,  not 
withhold  further  payment  and  demand  its  money  back.” 
Ibid.  Thus,  “even  when  fully  recited  in  statutes,  federal
conditions do not come with legal obligation.”  Ibid. 

Further, and as already noted, the conditions in spending 
legislation only come into force upon the acceptance of an-
other party.  Such conditions are thus “obligatory only by 
virtue of such agreement and not by force of law.”  D. Eng-
dahl, The Spending Power, 44 Duke L. J. 1, 104 (1994).  To 
be sure, “it is a statute that prescribes the funding condition
and requires denial of federal assistance if the funding con-
dition is not agreed to.”  Ibid.  But, “only the agreement—
and  not  the  statute—makes  the  terms  obligatory  on  the 
funds recipient and thus ‘secures’ the contemplated third-
party rights.”  Ibid.7  Accordingly, such “third-party rights 

—————— 

7 For this reason, the mere fact that spending conditions are enacted 
in statutory  form  is  irrelevant;  “not  everything  in  a  statute  is  legally 
binding.”  Hamburger 131; see also D. Engdahl, The Contract Thesis of
the Federal Spending Power, 52 S. D. L. Rev. 496, 500 (2007).  In other 
words,  while  Congress  may  influence  policy  “by  attaching  ‘strings’  to 
grants of money given to state and local governments, . . . those strings 
aren’t  laws,”  and  do  not  secure  rights,  in  the  sense  needed  to  support 
§1983  liability.    United  States  v.  Morgan,  230  F. 3d  1067,  1073  (CA8 
2000)  (Bye,  J.,  specially  concurring);  see  also  Westside  Mothers  v. 
Haveman, 133 F. Supp. 2d 549, 581–582 (ED Mich. 2001) (“[N]o interest
is  ‘secured’  by  the  federal  Medicaid  statute.    Upon  its  enactment,  this
federal law does not vest in a single American the right or privilege of 
receiving federally-subsidized medical care. . . . [T]hough passed by both