Salvatore Arcidiacono v. Elizabeth Whitehorn

── Salvatore Arcidiacono v. Elizabeth Whitehorn ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Date: June 08, 2026 Category: General In the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 24-3019 SALVATORE ARCIDIACONO, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. ELIZABETH M. WHITEHORN and DULCE QUINTERO, Defendants-Appellees. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 24 CV 412 — Manish S. Shah, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED OCTOBER 29, 2025 — DECIDED JUNE 8, 2026 ____________________ Before SYKES, ST. EVE, and MALDONADO, Circuit Judges. SYKES, Circuit Judge. When a Medicaid beneficiary is admitted to a long-term care facility in Illinois, the facility must submit an electronic form to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services providing basic information about the patient, the reason for admission, and the type of care the facility expects to provide. This “admission packet” is a prerequisite to the facility’s Medicaid reimbursement. 2 No. 24-3019 The plaintiffs here are four Illinois Medicaid beneficiaries who were admitted to long-term care facilities and whose ad- mission packets were rejected or mishandled by the Depart- ment. That, in turn, meant that the healthcare facilities were not reimbursed for at least a portion of their care. And alt- hough the law prohibits medical providers from billing Medicaid beneficiaries for unreimbursed care, the healthcare facilities billed the plaintiffs anyway. But the bills were mean- ingless because beneficiaries are not liable for the cost of un- reimbursed care. Although they suffered no financial loss or interruption in their healthcare services, the plaintiffs sued the state officials who run the Medicaid program claiming that the Department rejected their admission packets for either hypertechnical rea- sons or no reason at all. They propose to represent a class of Medicaid beneficiaries whose admission packets were re- jected under similar circumstances. The suit raises claims for violation of due process and the Medicaid Act and seeks a permanent injunction requiring systemic reform. The defendants moved to dismiss the case on two grounds: lack of standing and failure to state a viable claim for relief. The district judge granted the motion on the second ground, reasoning that the plaintiffs adequately alleged standing to sue (because they had received bills from the healthcare facilities) but failed to state a claim for violation of a statutory or constitutional right. The plaintiffs appealed. We begin and end with the question of standing. As noted, the complaint requests only injunctive relief; the plaintiffs do not seek damages. To establish standing to sue for injunctive relief, the plaintiffs must allege facts showing that they “face a real and immediate threat of repeated injury.” Murthy v. No. 24-3019 3 Missouri, 603 U.S. 43, 58 (2024) (quotation omitted). They have not done so. The rejection of their admission packets did not harm them, and they have not alleged any facts showing that they face a real and imminent threat of future injury. Accord- ingly, the plaintiffs lack standing to sue, and their complaint should have been dismissed on that basis. We therefore mod- ify the judgment to reflect a jurisdictional dismissal. As mod- ified, we affirm the judgment. I. Background This case comes to us at the pleading stage, so we accept as true the following allegations from the amended com- plaint. Between 2018 and 2023, the four named plaintiffs— Salvatore Arcidiacono, William Brown, Susan Miller, and William Sarchet—were admitted for long-term care at