Court Opinion

ID: 9478400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:48:10.467231+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:24.752012
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the denial of
rehearing en banc.
Appellants have suggested rehearing en banc, objecting to the panel majority’s statement that a privacy claim — framed by the panel as a facial attack on the statutory approval requirement per se, Maj. Op. 854 F.2d at 1386 — cannot prevail because the appellants failed to make a “definite showing of medical necessity,” id. at 1391. As I read the Suggestion of Appellants for Rehearing en banc, however, it confirms my prior understanding that they have made no facial attack; they never objected to the approval requirement per se, detached from the actual prospect of losing access to a second surgeon. Compare Suggestion of Appellants at 7 n. 8 with Concurring Op. at 1394-95. The seriousness of that prospect was unclear enough to lead both the majority and me to conclude that the case was not ripe. Accordingly, I do not believe that the case represents a holding of any kind on the legal issue that ultimately concerns appellants: the scope of any constitutional limits on the federal government’s power to substantively obstruct patients’ access to medical services that they reasonably deem valuable. Taking this view of the case, I have not called for a court vote on appellants’ suggestion.