Civil Procedure — disaster relief

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Civil Procedure — disaster relief

The district court is the proper forum for a disaster relief claimant to pursue relief that was denied by FEMA.

“The Hospital wants money, but not as compensation for FEMA’s failure to perform some other obligation. Instead the Hospital, like the state in Bowen, wants money as ‘the very thing to which he was entitled’ under the disaster-relief program. The Hospital resists this conclusion, telling us that what mattered in Bowen was not the status of Medicaid as a grant-in-aid program, but the fact that the grants would continue. Thus resolving the state’s dispute with the Secretary about one year’s allocation would govern future conduct as well. That’s true enough, see 487 U.S. at 905, but the Court did not say that only a dispute about one year’s component of a multi-year program could be raised under §702. Instead it distinguished between money as compensation for an injury, and money as the entitlement under a grant program. The Hospital asserts an entitlement to money under the Stafford Act. FEMA disagrees with the Hospital’s substantive position, but if its claim fails on the merits that does not retroactively divest the district court of jurisdiction. See Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678 (1946).”

Affirmed.

12-2007 Columbus Regional Hospital v. FEMA

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Barker, J., Easterbrook, J.