Law Commons^™

Hipaa-Phobia Hampers Efforts To Track And Contain Covid-19, Lee Hiromoto M.D., J.D.

SLU Law Journal Online

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), enacted by the US Congress 1996, laudably protects medical privacy in healthcare settings. However, this federal law has created a culture of fear that limits current efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Healthcare providers, who are covered by HIPAA, may be reluctant to disclose information about outbreak clusters for fear of violating the law. Healthcare organizations, who are also covered by the law, still rely on fax machines to avoid violating HIPAA’s data security requirements. And the scrupulous rule-following in healthcare has given independent life to a HIPAA boogeyman. Thus, officials who …

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 …

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 …

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

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 …

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

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 …

Legal Education In A Pandemic: A Crisis And Online Teaching Reveal Who My Students Are, Sonia M. Suter

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic upended things for everyone across the world in so many ways, including at universities and law schools. In switching to online teaching in the mid-semester last spring and continuing to teach first-year law students online this past fall, I have witnessed the strength and compassion of my students even in the face of the challenges of the pandemic, online learning, and political unease in our country. I have been heartened and bolstered by their deep commitment to building community with one another.

Law Faculty Experiences Teaching During The Pandemic, Bridget J. Crawford, Michelle S. Simon

Saint Louis University Law Journal

When colleges and universities abruptly shifted to online teaching in March 2020 all, focus (appropriately) was on ensuring continuity of education for students. In adapting courses to the new online environment, professors were encouraged to take into account the incredible stress students were experiencing, their new living conditions, and, in some cases, lack of access to technology and educational resources. For the Spring 2020 semester, almost all U.S. law schools shifted to some form of pass/fail grading in recognition of the enormous upheaval to students’ educational plans.

Less discussed during the initial months of the corornavirus pandemic was how faculty …

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 …

Systemic Racism, The Government’S Pandemic Response, And Racial Inequities In Covid-19, Ruqaiijah Yearby, Seema Mohapatra

All Faculty Scholarship

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal and state governments have ignored racial and ethnic minorities’ unequal access to employment and health care that results in racial inequities in COVID-19 infections and deaths. In addition, they have enacted laws that further exacerbate these inequities. Consequently, many racial and ethnic minorities are employed in low-wage essential jobs that lack paid sick leave and health insurance. This lack of benefits causes them to go to work even when they are sick and prevents them from receiving appropriate medical treatment. As a result, racial and ethnic minorities have disproportionately been infected and died from …

From A Distance: Providing Online Academic Support And Bar Exam Preparation To Law Students And Alumni During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Antonia Alice Badway Miceli

Saint Louis University Law Journal

At its core, an academic support program’s mission is to help students improve their academic performance. But academic support programs also serve a broader purpose. They serve as a bridge between students, faculty, and staff, supporting faculty in their curriculum and course development and nurturing the connections between members of the law school community. They often develop and improve relations with alumni through bar exam preparation efforts. And, sometimes, they are even involved in the recruiting of new students. Through all of these interactions with students, faculty, staff, and alumni, academic support programs foster a sense of community within the …

Social Media Self-Regulation And The Rise Of Vaccine Misinformation, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the main characteristics and shortcomings of mainstream social media responses to vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Parts I and II contextualize the recent expansion of vaccine information and disinformation in the online environment. Part III provides a survey and taxonomy of ongoing responses to vaccine misinformation adopted by mainstream social media. It further notes the limitations of current self-regulatory modes and illustrates these limitations by presenting a short case study on Facebook—the largest social media vehicle for vaccine-specific misinformation, currently estimated to harbor approximately half of the social media accounts linked to vaccine misinformation. Part IV examines potential …