Opinion ID: 810673
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Block-Grant Preemption Claim

Text: The district court also enjoined Indiana from enforcing Act 1210 to halt the payment of money Planned Parenthood receives from the State under a federal block-grant program for the diagnosis and monitoring of sexually transmitted diseases. The statutory authority for the program is as follows: § 247c. Sexually transmitted diseases; prevention and control projects and programs .... (c) Project grants to States The Secretary is also authorized to make project grants to States and, in consultation with the State health authority, to political subdivisions of States, for— (1) sexually transmitted diseases surveillance activities, including the reporting, screening, and followup of diagnostic tests for, and diagnosed cases of, sexually transmitted diseases . . . . 42 U.S.C. § 247c. The Disease Intervention Services agency (“DIS”) administers the grants at the federal level. In 2011 Indiana awarded Planned Parenthood two grants totaling $150,000 from federal funds the State received from DIS under § 247c(c). Planned Parenthood has re34 No. 11-2464 ceived grants from this program continuously since 1996 and alleges that but for Act 1210, it would receive renewals on an ongoing basis. The defunding law canceled Planned Parenthood’s 2011 contracts and makes the organization ineligible for future grants or renewals.1 0 The district court accepted Planned Parenthood’s argument that § 247c(c) preempts the defunding law and on this basis enjoined Indiana from cutting off the organization’s funding under this program. There are several problems with the court’s analysis. First, § 247c(c) does not create private rights actionable under § 1983. No one argued to the contrary, but the judge held that Planned Parenthood’s preemption claim may proceed anyway, as a direct claim under the Supremacy Clause. That was very likely an error. Even if it was not, Planned Parenthood cannot succeed on the merits of this claim. Section 247c(c) places no conditions on recipient states other than the basic requirement that the block-granted money be used for the stated purposes. Finally, the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine does not supply an alternative basis to affirm the injunction on the blockgrant claim. 10 The complaint also mentions other federal block-grant programs under which Planned Parenthood receives stateadministered federal funds, but the injunction proceeding was limited to § 247c(c). No. 11-2464 35
Right of Action? By its terms, § 247c(c) merely authorizes the HHS Secretary to make grants to the states for surveillance activities relating to sexually transmitted diseases. The statute confers no individual rights and therefore the remedy of § 1983 is unavailable. Planned Parenthood acknowledges as much, but persuaded the district court that the Supremacy Clause supplies a preemption right of action of its own force. We have our doubts. It is well-established that the Supremacy Clause is “not a source of any federal rights.” Chapman v. Hous. Welfare Rights Org., 441 U.S. 600, 613 (1979); see also Ill. Ass’n of Mortg. Brokers v. Office of Banks & Real Estate, 308 F.3d 762, 765 (7th Cir. 2002) (recognizing that the Supremacy Clause “does not of its own force create rights”). The Supremacy Clause “ ‘secure[s] federal rights by according them priority whenever they come in conflict with state law.’ ” Golden State Transit Corp. v. City of Los Angeles, 493 U.S. 103, 107 (1989) (alteration in original) (quoting Chapman, 441 U.S. at 613) (internal quotation marks omitted). Just this past Term, the Supreme Court was set to decide a case raising the question whether Medicaid providers and recipients could bring a claim that the Medicaid Act preempts state statutes reducing Medicaid payments to providers. See Douglas, 132 S. Ct. at 1207. In Douglas, as here, the providers and recipients had no statutory right of action under the Medicaid Act, but the Ninth Circuit said they could bring the suit directly under the Supremacy Clause. Id. at 1209. The Supreme 36 No. 11-2464 Court granted certiorari to decide whether the court of appeals was correct. Id. While the case was pending, however, CMS approved California’s statutory scheme. Id. The Court held that this development did not moot the case, id. at 1209-10, but remanded to the Ninth Circuit to permit that court to address the impact of this new development “in the first instance,” id. at 1211. Chief Justice Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. In their view, the Court should have kept the case and decided the legal question presented: whether the Supremacy Clause provides a cause of action to enforce the requirements of a Spending Clause statute when Congress has not provided a right of action in the statute itself. Id. at 1212 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting). That is the precise question here, and although the Court ultimately left it for another day, we can take some cues from the Chief Justice’s analysis. The Chief Justice began by reiterating the principle that the Supremacy Clause does not create federal rights, but instead “simply ensures that the rule established by Congress controls.” Id. at 1213. In other words, the role of the Supremacy Clause is simply to “ensure that, in a conflict with state law, whatever Congress says goes.” Id. at 1212. So “if Congress does not intend for a statute to supply a cause of action for its enforcement, it makes no sense to claim that the Supremacy Clause itself must provide one.” Id. In this situation, implying a direct right of action under the Supremacy Clause “would effect a complete end-run around [the Court’s] implied right of action and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 jurisprudence.” Id. at 1213. In No. 11-2464 37 the view of the dissenting justices in Douglas, a proper understanding of the Supremacy Clause compelled the conclusion that “[w]hen Congress did not intend to provide a private right of action to enforce a statute enacted under the Spending Clause, the Supremacy Clause does not supply one of its own force.” Id. at 1215. Other than the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Douglas, few appellate opinions have recognized a freestanding right to bring a preemption action under the Supremacy Clause, though we acknowledge that there are some. See, e.g., Wilderness Soc’y v. Kane County, Utah, 581 F.3d 1198, 1216 (10th Cir. 2009), vacated on other grounds, 632 F.3d 1162 (10th Cir. 2011) (en banc); Planned Parenthood of Hous. & Se. Tex. v. Sanchez, 403 F.3d 324, 331-35 (5th Cir. 2005). This approach is controversial (as the grant of certiorari in Douglas implies), and we think highly doubtful, for the reasons articulated by the Douglas dissenters. This is not, moreover, a circumstance covered by the doctrine of Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908). The preemption claim here, as in Douglas, does not involve the “pre-emptive assertion in equity of a defense that would otherwise have been available in the State’s enforcement proceedings at law.” Va. Office for Prot. & Advocacy v. Stewart, 131 S. Ct. 1632, 1642 (2011) (Kennedy, J., concurring); see also Douglas, 132 S. Ct. at 1213 (Roberts,