Summary: Gainwell Technologies accused of submitting nearly $500 million false Medicaid claims U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin permits second amended complaint Whistleblowers include former Eleanor Slater Hospital doctors and CFO Long-standing claims that the Eleanor Slater Hospital defrauded Medicaid out of nearly a half-billion dollars by having its fiscal agent, Gainwell Technologies, submit "fraudulent" claims are back on the federal court docket. And now, the federal government has weighed in with an opinion on the law that lets the case go forward. What's behind the lawsuit? Allegations by two former top doctors at the state-run hospital and the former chief financial officer that Gainwell had a central role in a decades-long fraud at the state-run hospital involving bilking Medicaid for up to $100 million a year, while "improperly warehousing, undertreating, and overmedicating ... primarily mentally disabled patients." The suit alleges almost $500 million in "false" claims between 2016 and 2021 alone. Gainwell remains the state's fiscal agent for Medicaid and has denied any wrongdoing or legal responsibility. The company is also responsible for navigating the state's current financial reporting dilemma related to Medicaid payments. The lawsuit is aimed at the state's fiscal agent, instead of the state of Rhode Island and the state agency known as the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) that runs the state hospital, because of legal barriers to filing this kind of whistleblower case against a state, including sovereign immunity. Kerri White, a spokeswoman for the umbrella agency known as the Executive Office of Health and Human Services that oversees BHDDH, said: "The State is not a party in the Gainwell case and has no comment." Why the case is moving forward U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin initially dismissed the complaint but recently opened the door to fresh arguments by the whistleblowers who brought the complaint. Sorokin then asked the federal government to weigh in on whether a third party, such as Gainwell, could be held liable "for knowingly causing the submission" of false Medicaid claims. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley answered, advising Sorokin that a fiscal agent can be liable for the submission of a false claim to Medicaid if it failed to stop the payment, or "recklessly" or "deliberately ignored" evidence that a claim violated Medicaid rules. The prosecutor’s filing came just days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order forming a task force, led by Vice President JD Vance and including the Department of Justice, to crack down on state-level fraud in benefit programs, including Medicaid, according to Bloomberg Law, which was the first to report the federal government's entry into the case. What is the lawsuit about? The case, initially filed under seal in June 2022, centers on allegations that Gainwell and unnamed administrators of the hospital, which operates on two campuses in Cranston and Burrillville, "schemed" between 2016 to 2021 to overcharge the Medicaid program in multiple ways. The suit alleges billings for nursing home-level services at a hospital that was not licensed as a nursing home, and at levels that did not reflect the actual cost of the services. Meanwhile, it said, the hospital manipulated patient counts to minimize the number of mentally ill patients. Brian Daley, the hospital's former chief medical officer, Assistant Chief Medical Officer Andrew Stone and former Chief Financial Officer Jennifer White allege that the hospital submitted numerous fraudulent bills to Medicaid, “to the tune of hundreds of millions of federal and state health care dollars,” which Gainwell then approved. "On average," the suit says, Eleanor Slater billed Medicaid almost $550,000 per patient, per year, which is almost four times the state average. And the average stay for each patent was more than nine years. Beyond the financial games, the whistleblowers said that the hospital's patients suffered. "In this rules-free zone, patients were grievously harmed. Psychiatric and developmentally disabled patients were warehoused in ESH, a physically deteriorating state hospital ... for years or decades." Lawsuit: Patients restrained all day, every day and subjected to abuse The suit specifically references Daley meeting a patient in 2018 who had been there since 1958, having been hospitalized for 60 years. "There simply is no medical or psychiatric illness that would require anyone to be in a hospital for 60years, especially a licensed acute-care hospital which ESH was supposed to be," the suit says. "That patient, however, was just the tip of the iceberg." The suit details patients locked in rooms, subjected to physical and sexual harm, and held in physical restraints, such as TAT belts, a kind of wrist-to-wrist restraint that acts like the shackles or handcuffs used in prisons. Patients were held in these conditions, with restraint, "all day, every day, for years, including sleeping hours." "Some were subjected to physical and sexual abuse by dangerous criminals who were transferred to ESH from prison simply because the state had nowhere else to put them," the lawsuit says. Some of the allegations were reported by various news outlets, including The Providence Journal, during then-Gov. Gina Raimondo's administration. How did we get here? Sorokin dismissed the lawsuit in 2025. But he agreed in December to allow the plaintiffs to file a second amended complaint. In his order, he noted that the whistleblowers had not produced a "communication between the state and Gainwell that would support an inference that Gainwell was in on the state’s scheme against the federal government." However, the facts in the new complaint "plausibly allege" that Gainwell acted with "at least, reckless disregard" when it came to the hospital's fraudulent Medicaid billing practices. Sorokin said that the facts presented suggest that even a "simple review" of the hospital's operations would have caused concern for Gainwell, particularly its nursing home designation. "Taken together, these facts suggest that Gainwell acted beyond mere mistake or negligence," Sorokin wrote. This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI hospital 'warehoused' mentally ill patients. Now, a lawsuit is moving forward. Reporting by Katherine Gregg, Providence Journal / The Providence Journal USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Summary: Trump attends Supreme Court arguments on birthright citizenship Supreme Court ruled against Trump on global tariffs case Three Trump appointees form conservative super-majority President Donald Trump was set to make a historic visit to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, attending arguments over the legality of a policy he considers crucial to his hardline approach toward immigration - a directive he signed on his first day back in office that would limit birthright citizenship. Outside the neoclassical courthouse on Capitol Hill, demonstrators gathered ahead of the arguments, some holding anti-Trump signs including ones reading "Trump must go now." The court has backed Trump in a series of rulings issued on an emergency basis since he returned to the presidency last year. Those decisions came on matters including immigration, mass federal layoffs, cutting foreign aid, dismantling the Education Department, banning transgender people from the military and other areas. But the court on February 20 ruled against Trump in a major case testing the legality of the sweeping global tariffs he imposed last year under a law meant for use in national emergencies. Since the tariffs ruling, Trump has lashed out repeatedly at the Supreme Court and the six justices who ruled against him in that case. The court said it is not aware of a president attending arguments in modern times, meaning since its current building opened in 1935. There are examples of 19th century presidents arguing cases before the court - though not while in office - including John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. The Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump during his first term in office - Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. Barrett's appointment gave the court its current conservative super-majority and ushered in an epoch in which the court has moved American law dramatically to the right including rulings rolling back abortion rights, rejecting race-conscious collegiate admissions policies, limiting the power of U.S. regulatory agencies and more. Trump and senior officials in his administration often have denounced judges who have issued rulings against his policies, sometimes in highly personal terms. Three of the court's six conservative justices - Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Gorsuch and Barrett - joined with the court's three liberal members in ruling that Trump had overstepped his authority in imposing tariffs. Trump was incensed at Gorsuch and Barrett in particular, calling them on the day of that ruling "an embarrassment to their families." And last week, Trump kept up his condemnation of his two appointees, saying that "they sicken me because they're bad for our country." Trump after the tariffs ruling said he was "ashamed" of the three conservative justices who ruled against him, calling them "fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical-left Democrats." RINO, meaning "Republican in name only," is a term sometimes used by conservative Republicans to insult fellow Republicans viewed as disloyal to the party. Trump after the ruling also claimed that the court "has been swayed by foreign interests," but declined to provide any evidence. A lower court blocked Trump's executive order directing U.S. agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. Trump's administration has said that granting citizenship to virtually anyone born on U.S. soil has created incentives for illegal immigration and led to "birth tourism," by which foreigners travel to the United States to give birth and secure citizenship for their children. Trump wrote on social media last year: "Birthright Citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent Citizens of the United States of America, and bringing their families with them, all the time laughing at the 'SUCKERS' that we are!" Trump added: "But the drug cartels love it! We are, for the sake of being politically correct, a STUPID Country but, in actuality, this is the exact opposite of being politically correct, and it is yet another point that leads to the dysfunction of America." (Reporting by Andrew Chung, John Kruzel, Jan Wolfe and Blake Brittain; Editing by Will Dunham)

Summary: Endangered Species Committee votes unanimously for exemption Exemption requested by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Rice's whale population threatened by oil and gas activities A federal panel, convened for the first time in more than three decades, voted unanimously on March 31 to exempt oil and gas drillers in the Gulf of Mexico from a law meant to protect endangered species including whales, birds and sea turtles. The meeting of the Endangered Species Committee, nicknamed the "God Squad" because of its power to grant exemptions to the Nixon-era Endangered Species Act, is the latest effort by the Trump administration to unwind regulations it says hold back domestic energy production. The six members of the committee — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Neil Jacobs, and Acting Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Pierre Yared — said they were obligated to vote for the exemption because it had been requested by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Burgum, the committee's chairman, invoked the global oil disruption from the war in Iran in linking the issue with the need for domestic energy supplies to support military operations and readiness. "Current events have shown the impact of what can happen when major energy sources are taken offline," he said. Hegseth, who was seated next to Burgum at the livestreamed meeting, said he asked for the exemption because pending lawsuits threatened to stop oil and gas activities in the Gulf. "We cannot allow our own rules to weaken our standing and strengthen those who wish to harm us," Hegseth said. "So for these reasons, exemption from the Endangered Species Act in the Gulf is not just a good idea, it is a critical matter of national security." The ESA allows for exemptions if the defense secretary finds it is needed for national security reasons, a provision that has never been tested. The endangered Rice's whale has been the subject of litigation over oil and gas exploration in the Gulf in recent years. A federal environmental analysis last year found that vessel strikes related to oil and gas drilling are likely to threaten the whales’ existence. Rice's whales are one of the rarest whale species in the world, according to NOAA, with fewer than 100 remaining. "This amoral action by Pete Hegseth and Trump's cronies is as horrific as it is illegal, and we'll overturn it in court," Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an emailed statement. An oil and gas industry group said Gulf activities remained subject to environmental protections under a range of other federal laws, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and National Environmental Policy Act. "Today's decision reflects that these robust protections are in place, and that serial litigation from activist groups targeting a lawful, well-regulated industry should not be allowed to indefinitely obstruct projects of clear national importance," Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, said in an emailed statement.