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Page Number: 39

4  MAINE COMMUNITY HEALTH OPTIONS v. UNITED STATES 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

a right of action to collect damages from the United States 
under any statute that “ ‘can fairly be interpreted as man-
dating  compensation.’ ”  Ante, at 24.  The Court is correct 
that  prior  cases  have  set  out  this  test,  but  as  the  Court 
acknowledges, we have “[r]arely” had to determine whether 
it was met.  See ante, at 26.  And we have certainly never 
inferred such a right in a case even remotely like these. 

Nor has any prior case provided a reasoned explanation
of  the  basis  for  the  test.    In  United  States  v.  Testan,  424 
U. S.  392  (1976),  the  Court  simply  lifted  the  language  in
question from an opinion of the old United States Court of
Claims before holding that the test was not met in the case
at  hand.  Id.,  at  400–402  (citing  Eastport  S.  S.  Corp.  v. 
United  States,  178  Ct.  Cl.  599,  607,  372  F. 2d  1002,  1009 
(1967)).  The Court of Claims opinion, in turn, did not ex-
plain the origin or basis for this test.  See id., at 607, 372 
F. 2d, at 1009.  And not only have later cases parroted this 
language, they have expanded it.  In United States v. White 
Mountain Apache Tribe, 537 U. S. 465, 473 (2003) (empha-
sis added), the Court wrote that “[i]t is enough . . . that a 
statute  . . .  be  reasonably  amenable  to  the  reading  that  it 
mandates a right of recovery in damages.” 

Despite  the  uncertain  foundation  of  this  test,  our  post-
Testan decisions have simply taken it as a given.  I would 
not continue that practice.  Before holding that this test re-
quires the payment of billions of dollars that Congress has 
pointedly refused to appropriate, we ought to be sure that
there is a reasonable basis for this test.  And that is ques-
tionable.2 

III 

There  is  obvious  tension  between  what  the  Court  now 

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2 Moreover, there is at least an argument that the Court’s application 
of the test here is itself in conflict with United States v. Testan, 424 U. S. 
392, 400 (1976), which also directed that the “grant of a right of action 
must be made with specificity.”