concluding that regulations which contained procedural and substantive guarantees expressly limiting the reasons for and means by which a provider may be terminated from the North Carolina medicaid program created a property interest in provider’s continued participation in the program unless terminated for cause
How later courts described this case
- concluding that regulations which contained procedural and substantive guarantees expressly limiting the reasons for and means by which a provider may be terminated from the North Carolina medicaid program created a property interest in provider’s continued participation in the program unless terminated for cause
- holding state regulations that did not authorize termination of a provider without cause created a property interest in continued participation in program entitling him to be terminated only for cause
- committee member who voted to suspend dentist was not biased despite having written a letter critical of a prior administrative settlement agreement between the dentist and the agency
- “An agency’s violation of its regulations is not unconstitutional unless the regulations are necessary to afford due process. When a property interest has been created, the due process clause, not state regulations, defines what process is constitutionally mandated.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I am quite prepared to assume but not to hold (it not being necessary), that the plaintiff had a property interest. A judge has frequent occasion to appreciate restraint by his predecessors, and their refusal to decide what need not have been decided. My concurrence is solely to reduce the possibility of unwieldly precedent should the question of what would constitute a constitutionally protected property right arise in the future in a context requiring resolution. I would fashion no unnecessary handcuffs for those who come after me.
In all events, however, I am satisfied that due process has not been denied and that the result reached by my panel colleagues is quite correct.