Almost a year ago, the Supreme Court gave a controversial decision Medina vs. Planned Parenthood (2025). In MedinaSouth Carolina did a a clear violation of federal Medicaid lawbut the Republican majority on the Court appeared bent on preventing patients affected by these legal violations from suing to enforce their rights. Among other things, the opinion of the Court in Medina it was contradicting the decision that the judges gave two years earlier Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023).
As I wrote at the time, the best explanation Medina it was not valid; it was political. South Carolina broke federal law specifically because it illegally cut funding to Planned Parenthood. Republican judges appear to be bending the law to ensure that abortion providers are paid.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a new opinion in FS Loan Opportunities v. Saba Capital Master Fundwhich only adds to the mystery as to why Medina it went down the way it was. Things of FS loans it is completely different from internal affairs Medina – FS loans is a securities law case that asks when investors can sue investment funds, when Medina concerns when patients may sue states for violating Medicaid law. But legal issues in FS loans and Medina they are very similar. Both involve a legal doctrine known as “implied causes of action.”
Although Medina is the most recent Court case (before FS loans) which deals with implied causes of action, the FS loans the decision does not show Medina anywhere. Instead, it heavily cites decisions that the Court refused to follow Medina. And it clearly embraces the statutory rule that the Court seemed to reject Medina.
The rules governing implied causes of action are complex enough to reduce even experienced attorneys to tears. But, if you’ll bear with me, it would be hard to escape a simple conclusion: The Court appears to be using these laws to achieve results favored by Republican justices and the anti-abortion movement.
What is the implied cause of action?
Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion in FS loans begins with a simple declarative sentence: “Congress, not the Court, decides who can enforce the law.” Not all federal laws are enforceable through lawsuits, and not all people who might want to sue under a particular federal law are allowed to do so.
In some cases, federal law clearly states that it authorizes private prosecutions against violators, or states who is allowed to file such lawsuits. In other cases, the right to sue may be implied from legal texts that do not expressly provide for such a suit. These strong rights to sue are known as “implied causes of action.”
Before Medinathe question of whether a particular federal statute creates a cause of action was ruled by the Court’s decision in Gonzaga University v. Doe (2002), which held that “for a law to create private rights (to sue), its text must be classified according to the persons who benefit.”
So, for example, a hypothetical law that says “no sweaty person can be denied access to a shower” can be enforced through private lawsuits, because the law is phrased in terms of who benefits from it (sweaty people). Such a statute that states that “states shall not restrict access to rainwater” will not be enforced through private litigation, because the statute lacks the individualized language required by Gonzaga.
Before Medina 2025 decision, the Court repeatedly emphasized Gonzaga’s principle. It did so recently in Talevskiwhich held that a federal statute creates an implied cause of action when it is “‘expressed in terms of persons to be benefited’ and contains ‘rights-creating,’ individualistic language with ‘consider without fail the benefiting class.’”
Under Gonzaga system, Medina it should have been an open-and-shut case. The case involved a federal law that allows Medicaid patients to choose their health care providers. South Carolina violated this law by refusing to allow Medicaid patients to choose Planned Parenthood as their health care provider. Here is the relevant legal text:
A State program of medical assistance must … provide that … anyone eligible for medical assistance (including medicine) they can get such help from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the required service or services (including an organization providing such services, or arranging their availability, on an advance payment basis), who offers to provide the service. he those services.
This statute contains the kind of “individual-centered language” demanded by cases like Gonzaga and Talevski. It extends the right to “any person,” except that these people “may obtain” medical care from a provider of their choice. It also concludes with a pronoun (“he”) referring to individuals who benefit from the law.
And yet, inside Medinasix Republican justices struck down the law. And they did it with the opinion that he did not even quote the relevant law. The phrase “stated according to the people who benefited” appears nowhere in Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion.
of Gorsuch Medina opinion is very difficult to analyze, but it seems to create a new law that confirms that no law can create an implied cause of action unless the law includes the magic word “rights” – as in: individual rights.
FS loans depends on the same Gonzaga a decision that the Court seemed to abandon Medina
Barrett’s majority opinion at FS loanshowever, it doesn’t give that hint Medina it even happened. Barrett does not see at any point that the law must use any special magic words to authorize individual cases. Instead, it depends on beforeMedina system established by the case as Gonzaga.
FS loans holds that “in order to create a private right, the law must use ‘rights-building language’ aimed at protecting a ‘certain class of people.’ quotes a key line from Gonzagawhich states that “laws create personal rights ‘when they are expressed according to the people who benefit.'” Gonzaga he’s back, baby.
But, if the Court wanted to remove that impression Medina it was an immediate decision that came with the pretext of denying relief to abortionists and their patients, Barrett’s. FS loans comments were required to explain why the new law the Court found applicable Medina not used in FS loans. Instead, Barrett’s comments do not include a single quote for Medina.
One possibility is that the two cases are causally different Medina It involved Medicaid, which is a government spending program, while FS loans involves the law regulating private business. of Gorsuch comments in Medina states that “powerful laws like Medicaid are unlikely” to have practical reasons. So maybe the magic word rule that Gorsuch seemed to rely on Medina it only applies to Medicaid and other cases involving government spending programs.
But Talevskithe Supreme Court case was decided two years before Medinait not only rejected the argument that there are separate rules for federal spending programs; that He completely mocked this argument. Party to fail inside Talevskithe decision, it said, “urges us to reject decades of precedent” and “rewrite” key federal law to exempt government spending programs from Gonzaga principle. But Talevski “decline” this “invitation to rethink the handiwork of Congress (and our precedent to interpret it).”
Another possibility is that Medina is different from FS loans because Medina involved a “Section 1983” lawsuit — a lawsuit brought under federal law allowing individuals to bring civil rights claims against state governments and state officials — and FS loans it doesn’t do that. of Gorsuch Medina The opinion describes the specific issue before the Court in that case as “whether the plaintiffs before us can maintain a § 1983 case to enforce the Medicaid qualified provider provision.”
But the problem with this difference is that Gonzaga – the example behind the Court’s reasoning FS loans – itself was a Section 1983 case. So, as long as Gonzaga has become law, the Court has held that its rule applies to cases brought under Section 1983. Medina is the only exception.
Maybe there is another way to tell the difference Medina and FS loans. But, again, the Court did not give such details in FS loans comments.
And, without such explanations, it is difficult to avoid the same conclusion that I reached a year ago, when Medina was released first. Medina it was not decided in good faith. Real ownership of Medina it’s that abortion providers and their patients can’t exercise their rights, because Republican judges say so.
The main principle in any nation governed by the rule of law is that similar cases must be treated alikeregardless of whether a group that an individual judges to be disliked – or even morally repugnant – benefits from the law. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 1989 essay“while, in writing for the majority of the Court, I adopt a general rule. … I do not bind the lower courts only, I restrain myself also.” Because “if the next case should have different facts such that my political or policy preferences regarding the outcome are completely contrary, I will not be able to exercise those preferences.”
Medina fails the Scalia test. There can be no special carve-out for abortion providers or abortion patients that denies them the same right to sue enjoyed by any other plaintiff.
