Ralph de la Torre, the CEO of Steward Health Care, is suing an entire Senate committee after being held in contempt of Congress. He faces both civil and criminal charges. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), led by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), issued a subpoena to de la Torre in July.
They wanted him to testify about the financial and operational decline of his hospital system. Steward Health Care, which once operated more than 30 hospitals across eight states, filed for bankruptcy in May. The financial problems at the hospitals under Steward’s management have reportedly led to the preventable deaths of 15 patients.
Over 2,000 others were placed in “immediate peril.” As services were cut and some hospitals closed, hundreds of health care workers lost their jobs. This left many communities without essential care. Conditions in the remaining facilities became very bad, with nurses reporting severe shortages of basic supplies.
De la Torre initially agreed to testify at the September 12 hearing. However, he withdrew a week before, citing a federal court order related to the bankruptcy case. He also said he had the right to not answer questions that could be used against him in court.
The HELP committee did not accept his reasons.
Resignation amid controversies
They said there were still topics he could discuss without violating the court order.
They also said he still had to appear before Congress when subpoenaed, even if he planned to use his Fifth Amendment rights. Despite this, de la Torre did not attend the hearing. This led the Senate to pursue contempt charges.
In his lawsuit, de la Torre says the senators are punishing him for exercising his Constitutional rights. He claims the hearing was set up to publicly humiliate him. The suit portrays de la Torre as a distinguished professional who is being unfairly targeted by senators.
He says they are using him as a scapegoat for the broader issues in Massachusetts’ health care system. The lawsuit seeks to have the federal court cancel the Senate committee’s subpoena. It also asks the court to stop both contempt charges and declare that the committee violated his Fifth Amendment rights.
However, legal experts are skeptical about the lawsuit’s chances. Stan M. Brand, an attorney known for representing a former Trump White House official in a similar case, describes the lawsuit as a “Hail Mary play” with “very little chance of succeeding.”
“Every time that someone has tried to sue the House or Senate directly to challenge a congressional subpoena, the courts have said, ‘That’s not the way this works,'” Brand noted.
