North Carolina eye surgeon Jay Singleton, MD, is appealing a June 21 unanimous court decision to dismiss his challenge to the state's certificate of need laws, The Carolina Journal reported Aug. 16.
The John Locke Foundation, The Carolina Journal's parent organization, submitted a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Dr. Singleton, the report said. The unanimous Appeals Court decision to dismiss the case means the state Supreme Court is not obligated to take it up.
Judge John Tyson's majority opinion in the dismissal appeared to partially validate some of Dr. Singleton's claims, saying that the state's CON statutes are costly, monopolistic, fraught with delays, restrictive, anticompetitive and outdated.
The North Carolina Supreme Court previously struck down CON restrictions in 1973, the report said. Five years later, state legislators approved a "substantially similar" CON law.