When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Maine Community Health Options v. United States on April 27, commentators in both popular and legal media saw it as yet another rejection by the Supreme Court of attempts to undermine the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. Neglected in these reports was the court's halt to the decades-long tug-of-war between the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the federal district courts on jurisdiction over what are essentially money claims against the federal government.

Over more than a century, statutory waivers of federal sovereign immunity were enacted piecemeal by Congress, but they nevertheless fit together into a reasonably well-woven tapestry of causes of action against the United States. Consistent with this coherent understanding, the Administrative Procedure Act for specific relief claims to be brought in federal district court and the Tucker Act for money claims to be filed in the Court of Federal Claims were appreciated as complementary provisions, rather than overlapping or conflicting.

But 30 years ago, the Supreme Court abruptly departed from the traditional prospective-specific-relief versus retrospective-money dichotomy, thereby blurring the lines between the APA and the Tucker Act and removing the clear jurisdictional border between the district courts and the Court of Federal Claims. In its 1988 decision in Bowen v. Massachusetts, the court permitted a singular type of plaintiff—a state government—to challenge federal withholding of Medicaid funds by bringing an APA suit in district court to enjoin the nonpayment.

Foreseeing jurisdictional "chaos," Justice Antonin Scalia dissented in Bowen. He characterized the state's suit as obviously seeking money and thus falling within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act. With Bowen, the jurisdictional "barrier" between the district courts and the Court of Federal Claims "sprang a leak, a leak that has threatened to become a gusher," in the words of another federal judge.

In the aftermath of Bowen, as described by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a "sort of cottage industry" arose of "lawyers attempting to craft suits, ultimately seeking money from the government, as suits for declaratory or injunctive relief without mentioning the money"—all as an end-run around the Tucker Act jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims. These included suits by parties claiming contract breach by the federal government; businesses seeking reimbursement of regulatory fees exacted by the United States; disappointed federal employment applicants seeking backpay; and Native American tribes alleging mismanagement of trust accounts. Each suit was cleverly pleaded as seeking equitable or specific relief under the APA in district court.

But these plaintiffs weren't seeking an injunction because the government was likely to act in bad faith by refusing to pay a money judgment. Nor did plaintiffs seek an accounting because they appreciated the beauty of a well-prepared financial statement. These suits were vehicles to the ultimate end of recovering past-due money. As the money-suits-that-were-not-money-suits proliferated, the nationwide authority of the Court of Federal Claims over money claims against the federal sovereign was eroding.

Then, slowly but steadily over the past 15 years, the Federal Circuit reined in attempts to evade the jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims. Exercising its unique nationwide interlocutory appellate jurisdiction, the Federal Circuit declared in most cases that a money judgment in the Court of Federal Claims was an adequate remedy, precluding resort to equitable remedies in District Court. Warning District Courts that they should look to the Federal Circuit—not the regional circuits—for direction on this jurisdictional question, the Federal Circuit ordered transfer of multiple lawsuits from district courts to the Court of Federal Claims.

Now with the recent decision in Maine Community Health, the Supreme Court has ended the 30-year era of forum-shopping for the preferred federal court to hear what are in reality money claims. Speaking for an eight-justice majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor held that a Tucker Act suit in the Court of Federal Claims was the right means for insurance companies to recover reimbursement promised by Congress if they lost money when taking the risk of entering new online markets to offer health insurance to uncovered persons.

In so doing, the court resoundingly endorsed the availability of the Tucker Act, with jurisdiction in the Court of Federal Claims, for financial claims against the federal government. Repeatedly quoting Scalia's dissent three decades earlier, Sotomayor narrowed Bowen to the special context of complex ongoing relationships between the states and the federal government for which prospective relief was necessary. By contrast, the Tucker Act is the right vehicle for claims seeking recovery of past-due money.

The Supreme Court now has reaffirmed the institutional integrity of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over money judgments and has stabilized jurisdictional doctrine. As the federal government's financial role continues to expand, particularly in the wake of the ongoing pandemic, the litigation home for monetary disputes against the federal sovereign has been confirmed.

Gregory Sisk is the Laghi Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) and the author of the West Academic hornbook on "Litigation With the Federal Government" (2016).  As an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, he drafted the legislation providing for an interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit from district court rulings on transfer motions to the Court of Federal Claims.