Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Texas Heartbeat Act Poses Threat To The Future Of Abortion Access, Kodie Mcginley

GGU Law Review Blog

As the abortion debate in the United States has grown increasingly tense over the recent years, a newly enacted Texas law could lay the groundwork for a national trend of restrictive abortion laws. SB 8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, was first signed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in May 2021, and came into effect on September 1st. The Texas Heartbeat Act is not the only recent bill that attempts to challenge Roe v. Wade. In 2018, Mississippi passed the Gestational Age Act, which bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Texas Heartbeat Act is even …

Biden’S Vaccination Mandate Plan: A Scatter-Shot Of Legal Solutions, Spencer Sellers

GGU Law Review Blog

The current COVID-19 pandemic is dominated by one trait. Data shows that nearly all COVID-19 related deaths in the United States are suffered by people who are not vaccinated. Hospitalizations are similarly unbalanced, with unvaccinated patients making up between 95% to 99.9% of the population of COVID-19 patients in hospitals.

In response, on September 9, 2021, President Joe Biden announced an action plan addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. The first part of the plan focused on increasing the population of domestically-vaccinated individuals. This first part of the plan can be divided into five policy goals. Four of those plan’s policy goals …

Reimagining Criminal Justice: How We Traded Out Asylums For Prisons, Zaynah Zaman

Reimagining Criminal Justice

The criminal justice system fails to adopt alternative mental health reforms better equipped to handle mental health crises rather than placing the mentally ill in institutions that have proven to worsen their illness. The criminalization of mental illness must end, says Zaynah Zaman, a student at Golden Gate University School of Law.

Water Contamination Ruining The Nation: How The Lead Water Crisis Disproportionately Affects Children Of Color, Annissa Allen-Gore

Environmental Law Journal blog

Lead contamination of drinking water continues to impact children in communities of color. This article provides an overview of the key laws and regulations designed to prevent toxic lead exposure, identifies important factors that have limited the effectiveness of these laws, and makes recommendations concerning possible solutions. Additionally, this article explores the progress being made by efforts to protect children in hot spots like Flint, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey, and identifies resources for people in other communities that may be facing similar issues due to aging infrastructure.

Covid-19: Enough About Humans, What About The Animals?, Kristen Tabone

Environmental Law Journal blog

This article will provide examples of how zoo animals and domestic animals around the world have both benefited and suffered during this pandemic, and the actions taken by their caregivers to protect them from the adverse impacts of COVID-19. It will then examine how the provisions of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and the PREPARED Act, have both failed to protect zoo animals. This article will also examine how the PETS Act and other legislation enacted during COVID-19 have better protected domestic animals during this time, and how the PREPARED Act would be a beneficial addition to the PETS Act …

Hiv Is Not A Crime, There Should Be No Jail Time, Bacilio Mendez Ii

GGU Law Review Blog

By way of personal, activist narrative, this blog post will provide broad context to the post-Stonewall legal landscape and the gay rights (now, the LGBTQ+) movement. The stage set, the writer will inform the audience of specific injustices brought upon persons living with HIV, during modern times, in the United States, simply based on their serostatus and offer solutions and actions that readers can take themselves.

This article includes links to State-by-State Statutory Information and several embedded video interviews, as well as an extensive bibliography.

Blockchain Is The Key To Facilitating The Healthcare System, Andrea Ortega

Blockchain Law

The healthcare industry is one of the world’s largest industries, accounting for 17.7% of the United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Unsurprisingly, the health spending share is projected to rise from 17.7 percent, as reported in 2018, to 19.7 percent by 2028. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world. Being that we spend the most on healthcare, one would assume that we are the healthiest nation in the world. Unfortunately, despite the highest spending, “Americans experience worse health outcomes than [our] international peers.”

It is time for the United States to take appropriate measures …

Law In The Time Of Covid-19: Legal Considerations Amidst A Growing Crisis, Justice Tecson

GGU Law Review Blog

COVID-19 has resulted in the destabilization of several aspects of human society, which may potentially cause an influx in litigation in certain practice areas such as employment, healthcare, and contract law. Although the legal effects of the pandemic have yet to be seen in their entirety, having knowledge of the potential legal issues better prepares individuals and businesses in dealing with this increased risk of litigation and could possibly help mitigate the circumstances caused by this viral, unprecedented attack on humanity.

No Choice: At The Crossroads Of Poverty And Decreasing Abortion Access, Marja-Leena Aaltonen

Poverty Law Conference & Symposium

This paper will briefly review a portion of current abortion law in the United States and then focus on the problem through a lens of poverty with regard to access. Then the discussion will turn to lawmakers’ and religious interests’ interference in family planning decisions. Finally, I offer two steps toward making abortion more accessible to all but especially toward mitigating the costs of accessing abortion.

Child Obesity, School Food Environments And The Best Interests Of The Child, Benedetta Faedi Duramy

Publications

This article is about child obesity, school food, and the key role schools can play in creating environments that can enhance children’s eating patterns and lifestyle behaviours and, thus, can support the realization of children’s best interest in relation to food and health. In contrast to the traditional approach that frames the obesity problem as a personal issue or as a matter of parental responsibility, this article argues that the prevention of child obesity should be interpreted as a State obligation under both international and domestic laws. Analysis turns to the example of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, adopted in …

Childhood Obesity And Positive Obligations: A Child Rights-Based Approach, Benedetta Faedi Duramy

Publications

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious current public health challenges. Its prevalence has increased at an alarming rate. The World Health Organization estimated that in 2016 the global number of overweight children under the age of five was over 41 million. Although there is widespread concern about the rising rates of childhood obesity, there is not as much consensus on how to address the problem. Obesity has been mostly considered either a matter of personal responsibility or of parental responsibility when it concerns children. Inadequate attention has been given instead to the obligations borne by States to prevent …

Hackers Made Me Lose My Job!: Health Data Privacy And Its Potentially Devastating Effect On The Lgbtq Population, Alex Lemberg

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Comment shows that because of an increasing rate and severity of data breaches, insufficient legal recourse for affected individuals, and lack of incentives for healthcare companies to strengthen their data security systems, leaked healthcare data will cause the substantive due process right of privacy of LGBTQ individuals to be disenfranchised. Because sexual orientation and gender identity are unprotected by heightened scrutiny under federal due process and equal protection jurisprudence, additional protections must be created for LGBTQ people. These protections should include a new legal right in tort under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), increase …

State And Federal Powers Clash Over Medical Marijuana In United States V. Mcintosh, Cara E. Alsterberg

Golden Gate University Law Review

The unanimous opinion in United States v. McIntosh held that a spending rider approved by Congress in 2014 and 2015 prohibits the United States Department of Justice (the Department) from prosecuting marijuana suppliers who fully comply with state laws allowing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. The Department argued that the rider only prohibits litigation against the states themselves, rather than prosecution of individuals who provide marijuana for medicinal purposes, because the language of the rider indicates that the Department may not use appropriated money to prevent states from implementing their medical marijuana laws.

The three-judge panel of the …

2015-16 Legislative Summary, Assembly Committee On Health

California Agencies

No abstract provided.

“Fat Taxes” Fighting Globesity Ignore Food Demand Inelasticities, John Andrew Brunner-Brown

Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law

The obesity pandemic is not unique to the United States, where obesity has been a major health concern for decades. Whereas in the 1980s only about one in six adult Americans were obese, recent surveys reveal that approximately one in three adult Americans are obese today. Worldwide there is a similar upward trend in obesity, as the global obesity rate has doubled since 1980. Because of this trend, the World Health Organization has described the pandemic as “globesity.”

There are extreme costs associated with individual obesity. For many, obesity diminishes quality of life in general because it creates a threat …

Paging Dr. Derrida: A Deconstructionist Approach To Understanding The Affordable Care Act Litigation, Laura A. Cisneros

Publications

Sovereignty federalism and cooperative federalism represent the two dominant federalism narratives among Supreme Court justices and scholars. The Court consistently invokes formal protections to safeguard the states' right to preside over their own empires.' Sovereignty scholars tend to embrace this dualistic vision of federalism that locates federalism's success in the state's ability to exercise supreme policymaking authority within its own sphere of influence without federal interference. By contrast, academics that lean toward cooperative federalism locate the states' power in their position as federal servants, not separate sovereigns. Scholars have commented that even though these academics tend to resist the rigid …

Sex Trafficking In Massage Parlors: Working Out The Knots In The San Francisco Health Code, Joanne Badua

GGU Law Review Blog

No abstract provided.

Equality Standards For Health Insurance Coverage: Will The Mental Health Parity And Addiction Equity Act End The Discrimination?, Ellen Weber

Golden Gate University Law Review

Congress enacted the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008 to end discriminatory health insurance coverage for persons with mental health and substance use disorders in large employer health plans. Adopting a comprehensive regulatory approach akin to that of other civil rights laws, the Parity Act requires “equity” in all plan features, including cost-sharing, durational limits and, most critically, the plan management practices that are used to deny many families medically necessary behavioral health care. Beginning in 2014, all health plans regulated by the Affordable Care Act must also comply with parity standards, effectively ending the second-class insurance …

Lost Souls: Constitutional Implications For The Deficiencies In Treatment For Persons With Mental Illness In Custody, Katherine L. Smith

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Comment explores systemic deficiencies of access to mental health care in prison systems and the Eighth Amendment implications of those deficiencies. Because the Eighth Amendment prohibits, among other things, infliction of cruel and unusual punishments, when denial of adequate mental health care results in undue suffering, the conditions of confinement may violate the Constitution. Therefore, there must be mechanisms in place to ensure necessary treatment is provided while protecting individual rights.

Part I of this Comment addresses the duty a state owes to those it incarcerates (e.g., to provide food, clothing, recreation, education, medical care) and what standards exist …

Keeping Bad Science Out Of The Courtroom: Why Post-Daubert Courts Are Correct In Excluding Opinions Based On Animal Studies From Birth-Defects Cases, Dije Ndreu

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Comment argues that courts should keep animal studies out of the courtroom in birth-defects toxic-torts cases. This will not only result in proper exclusion of unreliable evidence, but will also lead to valuable resources being directed to more worthy alternative tests, ultimately reducing human and animal suffering as birth defects are eradicated. Part I sets forth the evidentiary standards used to determine the admissibility of evidence and then presents background information on birth defects and how they are studied. It also discusses the problems inherent with animal tests and the contrasting value of human data. Part II explores the …

Ewing V. Goldstein And The Therapist's Duty To Warn In California, Gwynneth F. Smith

Golden Gate University Law Review

Part I of this Note reviews California law concerning the treatment of potentially dangerous patients, including both the duty to warn and the civil commitment process.s Part II examines the impact of the Ewing decision on the therapist's duty to warn. Part III proposes the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act ("LPS Act") as a suitable framework for dealing with potentially dangerous patients that, if used correctly, obviates the need to expand the triggering criteria for the duty to warn and circumvents the negative ramifications of the Ewing decision. The Note concludes that this framework provides a superior compromise, better protecting both patient confidentiality …

How The Rise Of Federal Bureaucratic Powers Challenges The Role Of Courts In Adjudicating Claims Of Injury Inflicted By Prescription Drugs, Denise K. Top

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Comment uses the recent Paxil litigation as an example of how the rise of federal bureaucratic powers, specifically those exercised by the FDA to administer the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (hereinafter "FDCA"), increasingly challenge the role of courts in adjudicating tort claims of injury inflicted by prescription drugs. Part I explains the current labeling requirements for prescription drugs. Part II describes product liability law regarding claims involving prescription drugs. Part III analyzes the drug manufacturers' and FDA's defenses to state tort claims, specifically preemption and primary jurisdiction. Part IV discusses the current law as it applies to the …

Murder And The Mmpi-2: The Necessity Of Knowledgeable Legal Professionals, Tracy O'Connor Pennuto

Golden Gate University Law Review

Part I of this Comment discusses the basic structure and purpose of the MMPI-2, the development and evolution of the MMPI into the MMPI-2, and reliability and validity issues. Part II provides a basic understanding of the correct administration, scoring, and interpretation of the MMPI-2 and describes standards for expert testimony. Part III presents a historical overview of the use of the MMPI-2 in court. The different types of cases in which the MMPI-2 is used are discussed along with the many applications of its use. Part IV describes the legal standards of admissibility of scientific evidence in court and …

Going Beyond Parents And Institutional Review Boards In Protecting Children Involved In Nontherapeutic Research, Efi Rubinstein

Golden Gate University Law Review

Part I of this Comment traces the development of ethical and legal guidelines for current informed consent procedures. Part II outlines the extent of parental authority in volunteering children for research, including legal exceptions to parental permission and possible limitations imposed on parental rights by the courts. Part III challenges the assumption that parents can and will always act in their child's best interest. Part IV argues that institutional review boards cannot be relied upon to protect children when parents fail to do so. Finally, Part V proposes possible improvements to the problematic evaluation process of parents and institutions when …

Not-So-Equal Protection: Securing Individuals Of Limited English Proficiency With Meaningful Access To Medical Services, Barbara Plantiko

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Comment focuses on how language discrimination manifests itself in various health care settings and how it deprives individuals with limited or no English proficiency of access to a variety of essential medical services. Part I of this article provides a brief overview of how courts and the legislature have dealt with language discrimination. Part II addresses the current conflict of the law regarding the difficulties in assessing and proscribing such discrimination in the medical context. Part III explores why the current case law and legislative efforts in this area are inadequate. Part IV proposes a solution as to how …

Renewed Compassion For The Dying In Compassion In Dying V. State Of Washington, Cara Elkin

Golden Gate University Law Review

In Compassion In Dying v. State of Washington, three patients, five physicians, and a non-profit organization called Compassion in Dying challenged the constitutionality of a Washington State statute which bans all assisted suicide, including physician-assisted death requested by terminally ill, mentally competent adults. The district court held the statute unconstitutional for violating the patient-plaintiffs' Fourteenth Amendment liberty interests and equal protection rights." A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit held that no constitutional right to die exists under either the Due Process or Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Ninth Circuit granted review …

American Academy Of Pediatrics V. Lungren: California's Parental Consent To Abortion Statute And The Right To Privacy, Michael Grimm

Golden Gate University Law Review

This comment will discuss the background right to privacy jurisprudence, examine the grounds under which the court of appeal decided the case, and review appellants' and respondents' arguments. Based upon the opposing parties' arguments and controlling precedent, the author will explain why the California Supreme Court should affirm the court of appeal's decision.

X Marks The Spot While Casey Strikes Out: Two Controversial Abortion Decisions, Sabina Zenkich

Golden Gate University Law Review

This article studies and defines abortion law in Ireland after X and in the United States after Casey. It addresses how these decisions affect Irish and American women's rights, respectively, to secure an abortion. It also scrutinizes the justices' opinions and criticizes the reasoning for their holdings. This article argues that both Courts changed their nations' straightforward abortion laws to reach decisions that the courts felt would be more palatable to their respective political constituencies and satisfy their own subjective beliefs. On the one hand, the Irish court declined to abide by the traditionally conservative position denying abortion rights as …

Reforms In Medical Device Regulation: An Examination Of The Silicone Gel Breast Implant Debacle, Rebecca Vveisman

Golden Gate University Law Review

This article will consider the regulatory policies of the FDA in protecting the health of the nation's women, particularly its handling of silicone gel breast implants and its policing of the leading implant manufacturer, Dow Corning Corporation. While this article recognizes the various difficult problems which the FDA must address in protecting consumers from unsafe food, drugs, and medical devices, it also recognizes the need for reform. This article will describe what resulted from the tragedies of diethylstilbestrol (DES) and the Dalkon Shield. With these failures in mind, this article will examine present FDA policies, describe social forces outside of …

The Forgotten And Neglected: Pregnant Women And Women Of Childbearing Age In The Context Of The Aids Epidemic, Carol Beth Barnett

Golden Gate University Law Review

This article will explore why pregnant women with HIV disease have become the focus of some of the most deeply-rooted value judgments about women and HIV, and how certain governmental policies, including state statutes, and local medical practices by hospitals, doctors and health clinics, raise reproductive freedom issues for pregnant women and women of childbearing age in the context of AIDS and HIV infection. Part I discusses the overall demographic picture of women with HIV disease, particularly as it relates to the interconnection between substance abuse and the transmission of HIV disease to women, and its affect on the numbers …