Are you against nursing staff standards in Nursing Homes? Too expensive, perhaps? Pay lawyers instead!
File suit! Block the standards from taking effect! Run Nursing Homes your way! But where to file suit? The answer comes in a moment.
In American Health Care Association v. Becerra, Amended Complaint, DE 26, filed 06.18.24 (N.D. Tex. Case No. 2:24-cv-00114), the lead plaintiff led five other plaintiffs in filing suit in the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division. For some reason, this is the courthouse of choice where plaintiffs include organizations that have been formed for the purpose of opposing allegedly "onerous" rules like standards for nursing staff in Nursing Homes.
For some reason, there is only one judge assigned to the Amarillo Division. That judge was appointed during the American Apocalypse between the afternoon of January 20, 2017 and the morning of January 20, 2021.
For some reason, the same judge rules against the United States in these cases.
In the lawsuit to block the "onerous" nurse staffing standards in Nursing Homes, something called the American Health Care Association and its five co-plaintiffs alleged:
That rule exceeds CMS’s statutory authority, effects a baffling and unexplained departure from the agency’s longstanding position, and creates impossible-to-meet standards that will harm thousands of nursing homes and the vulnerable Americans they serve.
The rule is easy to understand to those who read it. It turns out that the "agency's longstanding position" is a figment of the American Apocalypse, chiefly originating sometime between the afternoon of January 20, 2017 and the morning of January 20, 2021. Not so longstanding.
The "impossible-to-meet standards that will harm thousands of nursing homes" depends on how much of a Return on Investment you were counting on when you invested in Nursing Homes. If you expected to profit from the relative absence of nurses to whom you have to pay salaries, then that would be one thing which would make hiring nurses to staff Nursing Homes "impossible," I suppose.
The "vulnerable Americans" the nurses serve are the people who live in the plaintiffs' nursing homes. The plaintiffs actually allege that these "vulnerable Americans" will be harmed by having more nurses on staff.
Outside of Amarillo, none of this seems especially plausible. Plausibility is of course the standard to measure whether an amended complaint like this one states a claim upon which relief can be granted.
Undeterred by questions of plausibility, the Garland Department of Justice and the plaintiffs in this case have stipulated that the case should be resolved by both parties moving for the entry of judgment under a briefing schedule that runs into 2025. American Health Care Ass'n v. Becerra, Joint Motion for Briefing Schedule, DE 45, filed 08.09.24 (N.D. Tex. Case No. 2:24-cv-00114). A U.S. Magistrate Judge approved the stipulation.
So it's on to 2025. In the meantime, there does not seem to be anything to prevent the standards for nurses to staff Nursing Homes in the Northern District of Texas. Or anywhere else in the United States, for that matter. I cannot find any Order on the docket that says that the staffing standards are not in effect.
However I do find several Orders granting leave to foreign lawyers to put in their appearances in the case.
But no Orders enjoining the enforcement of the staffing standards for nurses in Nursing Homes, wherever they are located. And as yet, no stipulations either.
Time will tell, perhaps.
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