Michael E. Lincoln, Acting Director of the Indian Health Service, et al. v. Grover Vigil et al. (508 U.S. 182)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 24, 1993 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 508 U.S. 182 · 113 S. Ct. 2024
- Decided
- May 24, 1993
- Term
- October Term 1992
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Souter
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court. For several years in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the Indian Health Service provided diagnostic and treatment services, referred to collectively as the Indian Children’s Program (Program), to handicapped Indian children in the Southwest. In 1985, the Service decided to reallocate the Program’s resources to a nationwide effort to assist such children. We hold that the Service’s decision to discontinue the Program was “committed to agency discretion by law” and therefore not subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 701(a)(2), and that the Service’s exercise of that discretion was not subject to the notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements imposed by §553. h-i The Indian Health Service, an agency within the Public Health Service of the Department of Health and Human Services, provides health care for some 1.5 million American Indian and Alaska Native people. Brief for Petitioners 2. The Service receives yearly lump-sum appropriations from Congress and expends the funds under authority of the Snyder Act, 42 Stat. 208, as amended, 25 U. S. C. § 13, and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, 90 Stat. 1400, as amended, 25 U. S. C. § 1601 et seq. So far as it concerns us here, the Snyder Act authorizes the Service to “expend such moneys as Congress may from time to time appropriate, for…
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