Court Opinion

ID: 9558367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:08:28.828488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:02.024045
License: Public Domain

TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge
(Dissenting).
“It is only where the sound of the legislative trumpet is muted or uncertain that judges must interpret — and in interpreting, create. But where the call is a clarion one, the courts have no warrant to rewrite a statute in the guise of ‘interpretation.’ ” United States v. Charles George Trucking Co., 823 F.2d 685, 689 (1st Cir.1987). This is precisely what the majority has done in this case.
While the majority aptly sets forth the correct framework for interpreting a statute, it errs in proceeding beyond the first step — examination of the statutory text itself. It is axiomatic that where the text of a statute is unambiguous, and the ordinary meaning it reveals is not unreasonable, implausible, absurd, or inconsistent with the statutory scheme, then we should give effect to this meaning. See Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337, 340, 117 S.Ct. 843, 136 L.Ed.2d 808 (1997) (“Our inquiry must cease if the statutory language is unambiguous.”); Mullane v. Chambers, 333 F.3d 322, 330 (1st Cir.2003); see also Pritzker v. Yari, 42 F.3d 53, 67-68 (1st Cir.1994) (“[W]e will not depart from, or otherwise embellish, the language of a statute absent either undeniable textual ambiguity or some other extraordinary consideration, such as the prospect of yielding a patently absurd result ....”) (internal citations omitted).
The relevant statutory text reads:
In the case of a hospital that has a hospital emergency department, if any individual (whether or not eligible for benefits under this subchapter) comes to the emergency department and a request is made on the individual’s behalf for examination or treatment for a medical condition, the hospital must provide for an appropriate medical screening examination within the capability of the hospital’s emergency department....
42 U.S.C. § 1395dd(a) (emphasis added). In an apparent attempt to free itself from this textual straitjacket, the majority follows the lead of the Ninth Circuit in Arrington v. Wong, 237 F.3d 1066 (9th Cir.2001), in positing a dubious ambiguity *63through resort to Webster’s dictionary. See id. at 1070-71. While I have no quarrel with Webster’s affirmation that “to come,” in the abstract, can admit of two meanings — to move toward or approach, or to arrive at — we cannot look at this definition in the abstract. Instead, we must read the verb “to come” in the context of the sentence in which it appears, and we cannot simply ignore the verb conjugation chosen by Congress. See Robinson, 519 U.S. at 341, 117 S.Ct. 843. The statute speaks of an individual who “comes to the emergency department.” The common and ordinary reading of “comes to the emergency department” is “arrives at the emergency department,” not “moves toward or approaches the emergency department.” See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 420, 431, 120 S.Ct. 1479, 146 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000) (“We give the words of a statute their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning, absent an indication Congress intended them to bear some different import.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). To produce the latter connotation, the statute would have to say “is coming to,” “comes toward,” or some similar construction entailing ongoing action or movement. See Arrington, 237 F.3d at 1075 n. 2 (Fernandez, J., dissenting) (“For example, if we say that someone has ‘come home,’ we mean that he has arrived. We do not mean that he is on the way; to express that, we would say that he is ‘coming home.’ ”). The majority contorts the plain meaning of “comes to” by interpreting it as potentially meaning “moves toward or approaches” in this particular sentence, thereby manufacturing an ambiguity that otherwise would not exist.
To me it is clear that “comes to an emergency department” unambiguously means arrives at an emergency department.7 This interpretation, while unfortunate for Morales and others in her position, is neither unreasonable nor implausible. It is also not inconsistent with the statutory scheme or the broader context of the statute as a whole: the statute seeks to combat some instances of patient dumping, including dumping that occurs after an “undesirable” patient shows up at- the emergency room doors. While this restriction to physical presence may not have been the wisest one for Congress to write into the statute, it is not our prerogative to substitute our will for that of Congress. As such, our inquiry ends there. Harris Trust & Sav. Bank v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc., 530 U.S. 238, 254, 120 S.Ct. 2180, 147 L.Ed.2d 187 (2000); United States v. Roberson, 459 F.3d 39, 51 (1st Cir.2006); see also In re Cavanaugh, 306 F.3d 726, 731-32 (9th Cir.2002) (“Congress enacts statutes, not purposes, and courts may not depart from the statutory text because they believe some other arrangement would better serve the legislative goals.”). The majority ran afoul of this principle in continuing along on its interpretive odyssey far longer than it should have.
Even if we succumb to the siren’s song and join the majority in its scrutiny of the regulation — an exercise I deem unwarranted — the end result is the same. The regulation provides:
Comes to the emergency department means ... the individual ... [i]s in a ground or air nonhospital-owned ambulance on hospital property for presentation for examination and treatment for a medical condition at a hospital’s dedicated emergency department. However, an individual in a nonhospital-oumed ambulance off hospital property is not *64considered to have come to the hospital’s emergency department, even if a member of the ambulance staff contacts the hospital by telephone or telemetry communications and informs the hospital that they want to transport the individual to the hospital for examination and treatment. The hospital may direct the ambulance to another facility if it is in “diversionary status,” that is, it does not have the staff or facilities to accept any additional emergency patients. If, however, the ambulance staff disregards the hospital’s diversion instructions and transports the individual onto hospital property, the individual is considered to have come to the emergency department.
42 C.F.R. § 489.24(b)(4) (emphasis added). The meaning of the first and second sentences becomes evident simply by reading them: an individual in a non-hospital-owned ambulance has not “come to” the emergency department unless and until she is on hospital property. The second sentence is a manifest expression of HHS’s intent to exclude from this category those who merely call ahead. It is apparent that HHS put considerable thought into the rather elaborate formulation of the second sentence. While the majority faults the district court for declaring the third sentence superfluous, the majority effectively does the same for the much more pivotal first and second sentences by rendering the entire regulation a nullity, and proceeding to impose its own, contrary view of what “comes to” means. See Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 174, 121 S.Ct. 2120, 150 L.Ed.2d 251 (2001) (Supreme Court “especially unwilling to [treat a statutory term as surplusage] when the term occupies [a] pivotal ... place in the statutory scheme”). Whatever HHS intended by the third sentence, this sentence should not be read in such a way that it subverts the first two, in which HHS’s intent is abundantly clear.
As Judge Fernández posits in Arring-ton, the most plausible reading of the third sentence is that it is simply one scenario— when the hospital is in “diversionary status” — under which the hospital may deny access to an individual in a non-hospital-owned ambulance that calls ahead, and not the only scenario under which it may deny access. Arrington, 237 F.3d at 1076 (Fer-nández, J., dissenting). On this reading, the third sentence is not superfluous at all, but is instead fully compatible with the first two.
The fourth sentence explains what happens if the directive in the third sentence is ignored, and in so doing defines “comes to” in a manner fully consistent with the obvious meaning of that term in the first and second sentences. According to the fourth sentence, if the ambulance staff ignores the hospital’s denial of access and shows up on hospital property anyway, then the patient has “come to” the emergency department and the hospital must treat her. 42 C.F.R. § 489.24(b)(4). This sentence plainly evinces HHS’s intent that in order to have “come to” the emergency department, the patient must, at the least, be physically on hospital property. This construction of the statute is eminently plausible and demands our deference. See Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984).
The Hospital was not required to accept Morales into its emergency department under the governing statute or regulation because she never “came to” the emergency department. Since I would accordingly affirm the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the Hospital, I respectfully dissent.

. I state no view on whether "emergency department” in the statute includes the grounds of the hospital generally because this question is not at issue in this appeal.