| Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman
(No. 79-1404)
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| Syllabus
| Opinion
[ Rehnquist ] | Concurrence
[ Blackmun ] | Dissent
[ White ] |
| HTML version
PDF version | HTML version
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Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
Although I agree that the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed, and although I am in accord with much of what the Court says about the meaning of this confused and confusing legislation, see ante at 11-27, I do not join the Court's advisory discussion in Part IV of its opinion. In that Part, the Court properly and correctly notes, ante at 30, that it leaves open for consideration on remand whether, and in what form, §§ 6011 and 6063 create rights that are enforceable by private parties like those that make up these plaintiff classes. The Court, however, seems to me strongly to intimate that it will not view kindly any future positive holding in that direction. I agree that this specific question was not presented and is not today decided, but I decline to join what appears to be a negative attitude on the part of the Court to what is a possible construction of the Act.
It seems plain to me that Congress, in enacting § 6010; intended to do more than merely set out politically self-serving but essentially meaningless language about what the developmentally disabled deserve at the hands of state and federal authorities. A perfectly reasonable judicial interpretation of § 6010, which would avoid the odd and perhaps dangerous precedent of ascribing no meaning to a congressional enactment, would observe and give effect to the linkage between § 6010 and § 6063. As the Court points out, ante at 12, a State that accepts funds under the Act becomes legally obligated to submit a state plan containing
assurances [p33] satisfactory to the Secretary that the human rights of all persons with developmental disabilities . . . who are receiving treatment, services, or habilitation under programs assisted under this chapter will be protected consistent with section 6010. . . .
42 U.S.C. § 6063(b)(5)(C) (1976 ed., Supp. III).
That private parties, the intended beneficiaries of the Act, should have the power to enforce the modest legal content of § 6063 would not be an unusual application of our precedents, even for a legislative scheme that involves federal regulatory supervision of state operations See, e.g., Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677 (1979); Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397 (1970). See also Maile v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1 (1980).
Finally, I have difficulty with the Court's suggestion, ante at 28-29, that Pennhurst should be free of the Act's requirements because it does not directly receive funds under the Act. The Commonwealth's program for the institutionalized developmentally disabled is unified in one administration. To restrict the definition of "program assisted" in § 6063 to specific institutions within a unified program would allow a State to insulate substandard institutions from federal requirements merely by allocating federal funds to acceptable premises and state funds to substandard ones.