Law Commons^™

We Cannot Police Systemic Racism And Systemic Poverty: Why Policing Is Not A Solution To Our Public Health Crisis, Semir Bulle

Utah Law Review

From drug addiction to issues with homelessness, the mental health crisis, community disputes, traffic violations and more, there does not seem to be any evidence that increased police budgets and spending are the best use of limited resources. Criminalization in substitution for measured and targeted interventions has not worked in structurally vulnerable and marginalized communities and it is far past the time to accept tangible alternatives, such as funding initiatives like TCCS. Instead of perpetually increasing our police budget, let’s instead invest in healing our communities. Let’s invest this money in education, recreation, childcare, housing, health; measures that are proven …

Gender Regrets: Banning Abortion And Gender-Affirming Care, Noa Ben-Asher, Margot J. Pollans

Utah Law Review

Conservative politicians, lawmakers, and media have generated a national moral panic about transgender children and youth that has resulted, as of early 2024, in restrictions or bans on GAC for minors in twenty-four states. In these bans and the advocacy around them gender-affirming care for minors is presented as harmful, ideological, unnecessary, and likely to lead to future regret. The role of regret in the movement to ban gender-affirming care parallels the role of regret in the ongoing conservative campaign to ban abortion. In the years between Roe v. Wade (1973) and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), politicians …

Preempting Red State Restrictions On The Use Of Fda-Approved Drugs In Gender-Affirming Care?, Lars Noah

Utah Law Review

Some observers recently have wondered whether actions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) could federally preempt increasingly common state restrictions on gender-affirming care, particularly prohibitions on the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in adolescent patients. In theory, such a legal strategy might sidestep the need to lodge increasingly unsuccessful challenges under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supremacy Clause offers little assistance, however, in attempting to get around these state laws. Indeed, even if the FDA eventually approved such uses for currently marketed drugs, implied preemption doctrine as currently configured probably would not do the trick, though securing …

Panel Presentation, The Criminalization Of Trans Lives And Health Care: Provider And Patient Perspective, Dana N. Johns

Utah Law Review

Bans on gender affirming care are going to take a group of individuals who, as a whole, are already marginalized and already at risk. And then within that group, it’s going to segregate them even more because you’re going to have the people who can do that. You’re going to the families who can take their kids eight hours to another state. Then you’re going to the family that can’t because they can’t pay out of pocket, or they can’t take off work or they can’t make it to a state where their child can get care. These laws will …

Examining The Constitutionality Of Legislative Medical Care Bans For Transgender Youth, John Mejia

Utah Law Review

As should be abundantly clear by this Article, the stakes of bans on genderaffirming health care for transgender adolescents are existential. The recent flood of state-law bans is a low point in the ongoing fight to ensure that all people truly enjoy the liberties and protections guaranteed by our state and federal constitutions. Stories like Utah’s are more likely the rule, not the exception. Legislatures around the country are rushing to push through this legislation as quickly as possible, seemingly to catch their opponents off guard. The overwhelming majority of federal district courts to consider these laws find them repulsive …

Gender Pay Equity: An Analysis Of The United States Women’S National Team Soccer Settlement, Joni Hersch, Delaney M. Beck

Utah Law Review

Even though the United States Women’s National Team (“WNT”) has been far more successful than the United States Men’s National Team (“MNT”), the team members have experienced unequal treatment from the United States Soccer Federation (“USSF”) since its inception. In March 2019, members of the WNT filed suit against USSF, alleging that it had violated the Equal Pay Act (“EPA”) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The complaint alleged that USSF had a policy of discriminating against the WNT due to their players’ gender by paying them less than the MNT and providing them with lesser …

The Right To Violence, Sean Hill

Utah Law Review

Scholars have long contended that the state has a monopoly on the use of violence. This monopoly is considered essential for the state to assure the safety and security of its citizens. Whereas public officers have the broadest authority to deploy violence, in order to make arrests or to inflict punishment, private citizens allegedly have severe restrictions on their use of force. Specifically, the state is said to only authorize private violence when civilians face an imminent threat of unlawful force or when civilians are attempting to prevent a crime.

Yet the state explicitly authorized private violence against enslaved people …

Old And New Environmental Racism, Tseming Yang

Utah Law Review

Over the past five decades, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) moved from purposeful disregard of environmental racism to a public embrace of environmental justice as an organizational priority. Unfortunately, its efforts to address environmental discrimination remain a work-in-progress. This Article posits that the Agency’s core difficulties have arisen out of its reluctance to accept the continuing salience of race and the substantive implications for its regulatory work. It has blinded the Agency to the evolving manifestations of environmental discrimination and associated harms. The effect has been to impede the aggressive enforcement of antidiscrimination laws, particularly the discriminatory effects regulations …