The Supreme Court takes up a case on a patient’s rights

Going forward, it is likely that I will be following the Supreme Court more closely as it attacks and eliminates civil liberties, regulations, consumer protections, laws, law enforcement, democracy and secularism one case at a time. 

The lawsuit the Supreme Court has just agreed to hear is centered on just one question: Should people who depend on spending programs that are at least partly funded by the federal government, e.g., Medicaid or nutrition, housing or disabilities programs, be allowed to sue states when their rights are violated?

The stakes in this case are gigantic. One expert in health care law, Jane Perkins, an attorney at the National Health Law Program, summarized the real world impact of a Supreme Court decision that says people do not have a right to sue: “The reach of an adverse decision would be catastrophic. It would leave these programs really standing out there without a true enforcement mechanism.”

The decision in this potentially critically important case will most likely come down in May or June of 2023. The case is discussed in detail by NPR.

I predict (~95% confidence level) that the court will eliminate or severely limit people’s right to sue when their rights have been violated under federal spending laws. The outcome will be (i) higher profit margins and further reduced accountability for the state-funded organizations that states use to implement federal spending, and (ii) increased abuse and deaths of people in federal spending programs. Reasons for my prediction, some of which are discussed in the NPR article:

• For decades, it was settled law that people who had rights violated could sue states to get them to enforce people’s rights under federal spending programs. 
• Because the law was thought to be settled, court agreement to hear this case shocked experts who assumed the Supreme Court would never agree to hear a case like this. That the Supreme Court agreed to hear this case is a strong signal that it will gut the rights of people to enforce their rights under affected federal spending laws. 
• Other enforcement mechanisms are ineffective, mostly enforcement by the federal government. Federal enforcement has been attacked and undermined for decades by Republicans and affected business communities, both of whom hate government, business regulations, consumer protections and the rule of law, except when it protects wealthy or powerful elites and their interests.
• Twenty-two Republican state attorney generals openly support elimination of people’s rights under these laws. They are siding with the company who violated a patient's rights, which led to the lawsuit against the state to enforce the law. The company does not want these federal laws enforced and neither do Republicans in law enforcement. The Republicans argue that these lawsuits overburden their states and just reward attorneys instead of the people in federal spending programs whose rights were violated. (Notice the incoherence in that “reasoning”? It’s blatantly irrational.)
• Maybe most importantly, the Republican Attorney Generals are arguing to expand the scope of this case from people’s right to sue under federal spending programs, to people’s right to sue for all alleged civil rights violations. For example, if a state denies a permit to protest and the affected person or group sues the state for violating their right to freedom of expression, that mechanism to defend their right to speech would be eliminated. That is how fascism works.
• The NPR article includes this comment: “But even if the agency [involved in the lawsuit] complies with the demands and withdraws its petition, legal experts say it might be too late. Now that the Supreme Court has shown interest in looking at such a sweeping question, there's a good chance it could pick up the next case that raises it.”

I’ve been warning about the Republican Party threat to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. This is another warning. 

I don’t know the odds of this happening (maybe ~50% ?), but in this single case all of our civil liberties could wind up severely limited or eliminated because there would be no practical mechanism to impel law enforcement to enforce the laws that defend our rights. If not this case, another one that follows behind it. The radical right now sees that the Supreme Court is open to entertaining legal rights cases and cutting them back. 

Neutering our civil liberties is a core goal of the Christian nationalist elites and the brass knuckles capitalist elites that now fully control the Republican Party. Those GOP elites are hell bent on taking power from federal and state governments, the laws and the people and shifting that vast power to themselves and the business community. Those people are Christofascists, regular fascists and kleptocrats, not patriots, truth tellers or democrats. Obviously, none of those elites will admit to their real intentions or any of their attacks on democracy, the rule of law or civil liberties. That is the case even though they are now openly attacking all three and their Christofascist-fascist-kleptocrat agenda is crystal clear.

The day will come when Republican elite fascists can do their filthy work behind closed doors. They will close down means for information like this to become public. Then the fascist’s poison daggers will finally kill off all meaningful vestiges of democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. After that, people like me will be at the top of the Republican menu of things to be silenced. That day is coming.

Waddabout the rank and file?

The Republican rank and file is either unaware of most or all of the fascist elite’s agenda, or they are at least partly aware and support it. I bet that less than ~3% of the rank and file are fully aware and openly support it. Maybe ~10% are mostly aware and support it, but not openly. There is a hell of a lot of deceit going on here. 

Qs: Is the deceived and/or clueless Republican R&F not blameworthy in any of this because they are deceived or clueless? To they have any responsibility of any kind to become a little less deceived or clueless? Do average citizens in a liberal democracy have any responsibility do do anything at all, e.g., obey the rule of law or defend democracy?