American Hospital Association v. Burwell: Correctly Choosing but Erroneously Applying Judicial Discretion in Mandamus Relief Concerning Agency Noncompliance

Michael L. LaBattaglia

In American Hospital Association v. Burwell, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia considered whether to compel the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) to conduct Medicare reimbursement hearings that had not occurred within a ninety-day statutory deadline. Plaintiff hospitals awaiting their hearings for far longer than ninety days sought mandamus relief; a judicial remedy to direct HHS to conduct the hearings in compliance with the statutory deadline. Unlike some courts in other federal circuits, courts in the D.C. Circuit do not automatically issue mandamus relief whenever an agency does not comply with a statutory deadline. Accordingly, the district court employed a discretionary test to evaluate whether mandamus relief was appropriate based on individualized factors of the case. In applying the test in this case, the district court denied mandamus relief.

This Note will support the D.C. Circuit’s use of a discretionary balancing test but argues that the district court erroneously balanced the relevant factors. On one side of the scale, the district court allowed its strict posture of deference toward agency policymaking to bias the scale too heavily against mandamus relief. On the other side, the court overlooked or minimized critical facts favoring mandamus relief, such as Congress’s purpose for the statutory deadline and specific instances in the plaintiffs’ pleadings demonstrating the deleterious effect of HHS’s noncompliance on human health and welfare. This Note will explain, moreover, that the district court’s decision illustrates the problematic void created when strict deference doctrine prevents courts from exercising reasonable discretion in protecting certain legal rights while the other branches of government lack forthcoming remedies to address the issue.