Court Opinion

ID: 9428867
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:01.163229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:15.629516
License: Public Domain

Justice White,
concurring in the judgments.*
The issue in Blum v. Yaretsky, No. 80-1952, is whether a private nursing home’s decision to discharge or transfer a Medicaid patient satisfies the state-action requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment. To satisfy this requirement, respondents must show that the transfer or discharge is made on the basis of some rule of decision for which the State is responsible. Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., post, at 937. It is not enough to show that the State takes certain actions in response to this private decision. The rule of decision implicated in the actions at issue here appears to be nothing more than a medical judgment. This is the clear import of the majority’s conclusion that the “decisions ultimately turn on medical judgments made by private parties according to professional standards that are not established by the State,” post, at 1008, with which I agree.
*844Similarly, the allegations of the petitioners in Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, No. 80-2102, fail to satisfy the state-action requirement. In this case, the question of state action focuses on an employment decision made by a private school that receives most of its funding from public sources and is subject to state regulation in certain respects. For me, the critical factor is the absence of any allegation that the employment decision was itself based upon some rule of conduct or policy put forth by the State. As the majority states, “in contrast to the extensive regulation of the school generally, the various regulators showed relatively little interest in the school’s personnel matters.” Ante, at 841. The employment decision remains, therefore, a private decision not fairly attributable to the State.
Accordingly, I concur in the judgments.

[This opinion applies also to No. 80-1952, Blum, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services, et al. v. Yaretsky et al., post, p. 991.]