Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1263diff_868c.pdf
Page Number: 27

10 

GALLARDO v. MARSTILLER 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

from  any  third  party,”  §1396k(a)(1)(A),  permits  recovery 
from  settlement  funds  compensating  for  all  medical  ex-
penses, past or future.  If this provision were interpreted in
isolation to sweep so broadly, however, its text would place 
no temporal limitation on the rights assigned to the State. 
For example, if Medicaid were to fund an individual’s med-
ical  care  as  a  teenager,  the  State  would  be  entitled  to  re-
cover the costs of that care from any unrelated future tort
settlement for medical expenses, regardless of whether the 
individual  remained  on  Medicaid  or  the  state  plan  fur-
nished any services related to those future injuries.  Such a 
nonsensical  “lifetime  assignment,”  Brief  for  Petitioner  32, 
would constitute an “unfair” erosion of the anti-lien provi-
sion,  Ahlborn,  547  U. S.,  at  288,  contravening  Congress’
careful  design.  In  contrast,  a  harmonious  reading  of  the 
statute,  consistent  with  Ahlborn,  limits  the  funds  from 
which a State may recover to those awarded for expenses
paid and therefore presents no such concern. 

III 
Despite  the  foregoing,  the  Court  reads  the  assignment
provision standing alone to establish, unlike all the other
provisions of the Act at issue, a substantially broader right 
to recover from payments for all medical care, whether paid
by the State or not.  The Court commits several errors on 
the  path  to  its  holding,  which  departs  from  the  statutory
scheme  as  understood  in  Ahlborn  and  forces  the  Court  to 
adopt an implausible workaround in order to mitigate the 
absurd  consequence,  discussed  above,  of  its  acontextual 
reading. 

A 

The  Court’s  analysis  starts  off  backward.  The  Court 
states first that the Act requires a State to condition Medi-
caid eligibility on assignment of rights, and only then notes