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Full-Text Articles in Law
From Deference To Indifference: Judicial Review Of The Scope Of Public Health Authority During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Wendy E. Parmet
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 …
Tribal Water Rights And Tribal Health: The Klamath Tribes And The Navajo Nation During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Robin Kundis Craig
Tribal Water Rights And Tribal Health: The Klamath Tribes And The Navajo Nation During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Robin Kundis Craig
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
No abstract provided.
Racism, Health Equity, And Crisis Standards Of Care In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Charlene Galarneau, Ruqaiijah Yearby
Racism, Health Equity, And Crisis Standards Of Care In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Charlene Galarneau, Ruqaiijah Yearby
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
Long-standing and deeply embedded institutional racism, notably anti-Black racism in U.S. health care, has provided a solid footing for the health inequities by race evident in the COVID-19 pandemic. Inequities in susceptibility, exposure, infection, hospitalization, and treatment reflect and reinforce this racism and cause incalculable and preventable suffering in and loss of Black lives. This Article identifies multiple expressions of racism evident in the crisis standards of care (CSC) created by states and health care institutions to guide the ethical allocation of scarce critical care resources including ventilators. Contextualized within the broad landscape of health inequities pre-COVID-19 as well as …
Centering Racial Equity: Disparities Task Forces As A Strategy To Ensure An Equitable Pandemic Response, Dawn M. Hunter, Betsy Lawton
Centering Racial Equity: Disparities Task Forces As A Strategy To Ensure An Equitable Pandemic Response, Dawn M. Hunter, Betsy Lawton
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
COVID-19 has had a stark and severe impact on health, economic stability, housing, and education in communities of color in the United States. As the pandemic has unfolded, the disproportionate number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19 among Black, Hispanic and Latinx, and Indigenous people has served as a stark reminder that the systems and structures that lead to these disparities need to be changed in order to achieve equitable outcomes.
This Article assesses efforts by cities, counties, states, and organizations to address the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color through formal task forces or working groups …
Seeking Safety While Giving Birth During The Pandemic, Elizabeth Kukura
Seeking Safety While Giving Birth During The Pandemic, Elizabeth Kukura
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
As COVID-19 spread throughout the United States in early 2020, many pregnant people sought alternatives to delivering in a hospital. Midwifery practices offering services at home or in a freestanding birth center reported record numbers of inquiries, including from people looking to transfer care near the end of pregnancy. Whether due to fear of COVID-19 exposure in health care settings or out of a desire to avoid restrictive hospital policies regarding support people and newborn separation, people who had not previously considered home birth were newly drawn to midwifery care and others who had considered a midwife-attended birth redoubled their …
Disability, Access, And Other Considerations: A Title Ii Framework For A Pandemic Crisis Response (Covid-19), George M. Powers, Lex Frieden, Vinh Nguyen
Disability, Access, And Other Considerations: A Title Ii Framework For A Pandemic Crisis Response (Covid-19), George M. Powers, Lex Frieden, Vinh Nguyen
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
This Article examines how plans for emergency medical rationing during the COVID-19 pandemic may discriminate against those with disabilities. More specifically, this Article lays out the obligation of state and local governments under Title II of the ADA in creating and enforcing equitable and fair rationing plans during this COVID-19 crisis. For example, ventilator shortages are a common occurrence. The ADA, similar to other civil rights laws, operates so that a person with a disability is not denied a ventilator or other resources because of his/her disability. One reason that a person with a disability may be denied limited medical …
The Urban Trauma Drama: The Intersecting Path Of Criminal Justice And Public Health Revealed During The Covid-19 Pandemic, José Felipé Anderson
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 …
Skirting The Law: Medicaid Block Grants And Per-Capita Caps In A Pandemic, Laura D. Hermer
Skirting The Law: Medicaid Block Grants And Per-Capita Caps In A Pandemic, Laura D. Hermer
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
To what extent can an administration abridge Medicaid’s entitlement status by administrative fiat? In the final year of the Trump administration, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sought to push the outer bounds of this question by announcing the Healthy Adult Opportunity (HAO) initiative. It invited states to submit § 1115 demonstration applications to cover individuals not eligible for Medicaid benefits under the state’s Medicaid plan—meaning, in many cases, the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) Medicaid expansion population. Spending on those populations would be capped, not by purporting to waive federal law regarding matching …
Finding The Cluster: Balancing Privacy And Public Health Amid The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jessie L. Bekker
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 …
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
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 …
Mobile Medical App Regulation: Preventing A Pandemic Of “Mobilechondriacs”, Nathaniel R. Carroll
Mobile Medical App Regulation: Preventing A Pandemic Of “Mobilechondriacs”, Nathaniel R. Carroll
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
No abstract provided.
The Ongoing And Iterative Task Of Pandemic Preparedness, Robert Gatter
The Ongoing And Iterative Task Of Pandemic Preparedness, Robert Gatter
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
No abstract provided.
Reflections On Preparedness: Pandemic Planning In The Bush Administration, Stewart Simonson
Reflections On Preparedness: Pandemic Planning In The Bush Administration, Stewart Simonson
Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy
No abstract provided.