Jon Guze, senior fellow in legal studies at the Raleigh, N.C.-based John Locke Foundation, filed a July 17 brief urging the North Carolina Court of Appeals to apply a 2024 state Supreme Court precedent in the case of Jay Singleton, DO, an ophthalmologist who has been fighting the state’s certificate–of-need laws for the last six years.
According to a July 17 Carolina Journal report, it is the second time Locke has filed in support of Dr. Singleton’s case; the foundation submitted an earlier amicus brief in April, when the case was still before the state Supreme Court.
Dr. Singleton, an ophthalmologist who owns Singleton Vision Center in New Bern, N.C., has challenged the CON law since April 2020 with support from the Institute for Justice. He argues the law violates his rights under the North Carolina Constitution by preventing him from performing most eye surgeries in his own operating room. His patients must instead go to CarolinaEast Health System, the New Bern-based hospital that holds the region’s only CON for the service.
A three-judge Superior Court panel dismissed Dr. Singleton’s claims in December, ruling the CON law facially constitutional and citing a 2010 precedent that found the law serves a legitimate purpose. The panel also rejected Dr. Singleton’s monopoly argument, finding patients in his service area still have access to 80 operating rooms across nine providers in bordering regions. Dr. Singleton appealed July 10, arguing the panel disregarded an October 2024 state Supreme Court ruling that directed it to weigh guidance from a separate case, Kinsley v. Ace Speedway Racing, when evaluating claims that a government action violates fundamental constitutional rights.
Mr. Guze’s brief argues Ace Speedway set a “reasonably necessary” test that courts must apply in such cases, a standard he said falls between the rational-basis and strict-scrutiny reviews courts have traditionally relied on. He also noted that Justice Richard Dietz found the trial court’s handling of the Ace Speedway precedent perplexing when the state Supreme Court declined, for a second time, to take up Dr. Singleton’s case directly.
The state’s position at trial also rested partly on a distinction between an “operating room,” which requires a CON, and a “procedure room,” which does not — an argument Dr. Singleton’s attorney called an 11th-hour reinterpretation of the law.
The case now sits with the North Carolina Court of Appeals. No date for oral arguments had been scheduled as of publication.
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