Law Commons^™

From Deference To Indifference: Judicial Review Of The Scope Of Public Health Authority During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Wendy E. Parmet

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

For most of American history, courts have granted public health officials significant deference in construing the scope of their own authority. This changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the federal courts, where deference was replaced with skepticism as courts used the major questions doctrine to narrow the scope of public health powers. This Article examines this development and considers its implications for public health. Part II begins by recounting the long history of judicial deference to officials’ determination of the scope of their public health powers. Part III notes some of the problems with such deference and the pre-pandemic …

Authority To Improve Or Harm Health: The Public Health Front In A Decades-Long Battle Over Governmental Powers, Sabrina Adler, Sara Bartel, Heather Wong

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Backlash to local, state, and federal responses to combat COVID-19 has resulted in a small but vocal cohort of legislatures and courts trying to change long-settled and foundational principles of public health decision-making. They have shifted authority away from experts and local decision-makers, limiting emergency response in ways that also impact day-to-day public health efforts. Considering some examples of other recent preemption efforts, it is clear that COVID-era backlash is part of a longer-term deregulatory agenda, often framed as an effort to keep “big government” out of people’s lives and to preserve individual freedoms. However, the impact of such deregulation …

Doing More With Less: State Public Health Emergency Powers Post-Pandemic, Kelly J. Deere

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Three years after COVID-19 arrived in the United States, many governors and public health officials are equipped with fewer—not more—public health emergency powers than at the start of the pandemic. This may seem counterintuitive, considering that this virus has killed more than 1.1 million Americans and counting. While public health emergency powers were stripped on the federal, state, and local level, this loss is most acutely felt at the state executive level. Some state legislatures passed laws banning state and local governments from implementing a mask or vaccine mandate, while others amended their state emergency disaster statutes to limit the …

What Is A Public Health Lawyer Today? Acting For, Against, And Beyond Public Health, Scott Burris

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Health in America is not looking good. Unique among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the basic measure of national health—life expectancy—was declining even before COVID-19. Public health, both as a system of institutions and as a profession working to promote longer and healthier lives, is also struggling. The normal insularity of the field’s professional culture—including a lack of legal competency—helped undermine the response to COVID-19, which was dismal by any measure. At this difficult time, this Article considers three different ways public health lawyers can make a contribution to public health as a goal and as …

Foreword: Probing The Intersection Of Climate Change And Public Health, Ana Santos Rutschman

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Urban Trauma Drama: The Intersecting Path Of Criminal Justice And Public Health Revealed During The Covid-19 Pandemic, José Felipé Anderson

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Our society often operates under the delusion that more incarceration in urban areas will make us safer. Crowded cities and the problems for its inhabitants are not new. Those problems often fall more heavily on minority groups. Failed education, healthcare unavailability, and a lack of decent housing have made it difficult for cities to cope with addiction and crime. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the issues in the criminal system harder to ignore. Decline of major manufacturing jobs in cities like the steel and auto industries removed key opportunities for those seeking to overcome poverty and raise families. Debilitating riots …

Finding The Cluster: Balancing Privacy And Public Health Amid The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jessie L. Bekker

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

More than 800,000 Americans have died and more than fifty-seven million sickened since March 2020 from the COVID-19 virus and its highly contagious variants. Public health officials urged the public to mask up, socially distance, and stay home in order to curb the virus’ spread in the early months of the pandemic before a vaccine was approved. Meanwhile, those same officials blocked access to valuable information pinpointing areas of disease concentration—“hotspots”—which could have alerted members of the public of locations to avoid. Those officials generally—and usually incorrectly—cited the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as grounds for …

An Argument For Explicit Public Health Rationale In Lgbtq Antidiscrimination Law As A Tool For Stigma Reduction, Heather A. Walter-Mccabe, M. Killian Kinney

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (inclusive of nonbinary), and queer (collectively, LGBTQ) community is experiencing health inequities at alarming rates. From behavioral health issues, to violence issues, to increased rates of homelessness, structural stigma impacts LGBTQ communities at a disproportionate rate. Suicide numbers are particularly concerning. The LGB community rate of suicide is two to three times that of the general population. For the transgender and nonbinary community, that number soars to nearly nine times that of the general population. In this article, we examine the social determinates of health impacting the LGBTQ community and the ways structural stigma supports …

Meat Processing Workers And The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Subrogation Of People, Public Health, And Ethics To Profits And A Path Forward, Kelly K. Dineen

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing health injustices. People who are Latino/Latinx, Black, Indigenous or members of other minority groups have disproportionately paid with their very lives. The pandemic has also exposed the complex interdependence of worker health and well-being, community health, and economic security. Industries like meat processing facilities—with congregate and high-density workplaces staffed by workers who are already disadvantaged by structural discrimination—must reckon with decades of subrogation and exploitation of workers. During this pandemic, the industry has pushed that exploitation to a point of no return. Policies to protect workers need a reset to an orientation …

Social Work As An Important Collaborator In Transdisciplinary Public Health Law: Why Does It Matter And Where Does It Fit?, Heather A. Walter-Mccabe

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Public health law has been a growing field over the last few decades. From the early days of its initial recognition as an academic and professional field to its more recent texts and treatises, public health law is continuing to define itself. To that end, Burris et al. recently published two works describing a transdisciplinary model of public health law and five essential services of public health law.

This article examines how the inclusion of social work in the model can be instrumental in forming better public health laws. The intentional inclusion of social work collaborators would supplement legal and …

Three Lost Ebola Facts And Public Health Legal Preparedness, Robert Gatter

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Three key facts about Ebola Transmission should drive policy designed to control the risk of transmission during a crisis.

• Ebola—like HIV—is not easily transmissible human-to-human.
• Ebola has “dry” and “wet” symptoms, and only the wet symptoms threaten public health.
• A fever is Ebola’s canary in a coal mine; it provides timely warning of a coming threat.

Yet, during the U.S. Ebola scare in 2014, these three facts were lost. Unnecessary quarantine, stigma, and burden on those exposed to Ebola resulted, including especially for those who volunteered to fight the disease at its source abroad. Tragically, the law permitted these injustices …

Evidence-Based Public Health Is The Answer To Increasing American Childhood Vaccination Rates, Not Legislative Fortitude, Molly F. Anderson

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

After recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease across the United States, some states have responded by removing non-medical exemptions. State legislatures that remove non-medical exemptions do so with the hope of increasing vaccination rates. However, there are serious concerns about this knee-jerk legislative reaction. Removing non-medical exemptions can lead to anti-vaccination sentiment and interference with parental autonomy.

This article argues that instead of removing non-medical exemptions, states should implement evidence-based public health solutions in order to increase vaccination rates. One example of an evidence-based solution is the Community Guide, a resource that contains reviews by a Task Force on a wide …

Anticipating Hiv Vaccines: Sketching An Agenda For Public Health Ethics And Policy In The United States, James M. Dubois, Amanda Hine, Michele Kennett, Kayla Kostelecky, Joseph Norris, Rachel Presti, Kathryn Raliski, Jessi Roach, Adam Ruggles

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Disability: A Comparative Approach To Medical Resource Allocation In Public Health Emergencies, Katie Hanschke, Leslie E. Wolf, Wendy F. Hensel

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Life Sciences Dual Use Research Of Concern, Public Health And Safety, And The Doctrine Of Unconstitutional Conditions, Vickie J. Williams

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

New Governance In Action: Community Health Centers And The Public Health Service Act, Yolonda Campbell

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Public Health Response During And After The Emergency: Lessons From The Hiv Epidemic, Zita Lazzarini

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Preemption And The Public Health: How Wyeth V. Levine Stands To Change The Ways In Which We Implement Health Policy, Shane Levesque

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Cross-Border Legal Preparedness: A Comparative Review Of Selected Public Health Emergency Legal Authorities In Canada And Mexico, Daniel D. Stier, María Guadalupe Uribe Esquivel

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Impact Of Federal Law On Public Health Preparedness, Benjamin E. Berkman, Susan C. Kim, Lindsay F. Wiley

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.