Richard Armstronget Al., Petitioners v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc.

Summary

In a five-to-four judgment authored by Justice Scalia (except as to Part IV), the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and held that Medicaid providers cannot maintain an officer-enjoining equitable suit to compel Idaho to raise habilitation-service reimbursement rates under § 30(A) of the Medicaid Act. The Court ruled that the Supremacy Clause is a rule of decision for courts but is not a source of federal rights and creates no cause of action, and that Congress implicitly foreclosed private equitable enforcement of § 30(A) by vesting enforcement exclusively in the Secretary of Health and Human Services through fund withholding and by drafting § 30(A) as a broad, judgment-laden standard unsuited to judicial administration; § 30(A) also lacks the rights-creating language needed for an implied statutory action. Justice Breyer joined Parts I-III and concurred in the judgment, stressing the nonjudicial nature of rate-setting, while Justice Sotomayor, joined by Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Kagan, dissented on the ground that the identified statutory features fall far short of the detailed remedial scheme she deemed necessary to establish congressional foreclosure of traditionally available equitable relief.