Inequality Inquiry >> Category

Eviction/Housing Issues During COVID-19—Interview with Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid’s Joey Dobson

April 30, 2020

Picture of Joey Dobson

JLI staff members Maddie Sheehy, Adam Johnson, and Peter Schuetz recently interviewed Joey Dobson (Housing Policy Attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid). The group discussed how the pandemic can exacerbate health and safety issues in housing (mold, infestations, heat, etc.), the eviction moratorium, and how housing attorneys are advocating for their clients now and will be moving forward.

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Statement on COVID-19: Addressing Inequity Within Our Law School

January 31, 2022

JLI Editorial Board Over the past year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted deeply-rooted inequities within our law school community. Coupled with the normal pressures of law school, the pandemic has strained (and continues to strain) students’ mental, physical, and financial wellbeing. And the challenges brought by the pandemic are exponentially increased for…

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How Recent Executive Actions Deliver Reproductive Healthcare Discrimination

April 7, 2025

By: Kavya Mahesh, Volume 43 Staff Member View/Download PDF Version: How Recent Executive Actions Deliver Reproductive Healthcare Discrimination (Mahesh) Systemic healthcare discrimination targeting vulnerable populations has been a persistent obstacle in ensuring quality medical services can be enjoyed equally by everyone. The impacts of the current healthcare inequities on maternal and reproductive care result in…

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Inmate Rights and the Prison/Jail System During COVID-19—Interview with Prof. Susanna Blumenthal

May 9, 2020

Picture of Susanna Blumenthal

JLI staff members Abbie Hanson and Jen Davison recently interviewed Professor Susanna Blumenthal in a conversation about COVID-19’s effects on inmate rights and the prison/jail system. Professor Blumenthal co-directs the Program in Law and History at the University of Minnesota and she is an expert in criminal law. Professor Blumenthal’s research and writing focuses on the historical relationship between law and the human sciences. In this discussion, the group highlights the challenges of containing a virus in inherently constrained spaces, the damaging results on inmate rights, and how groups are working to ensure that incarcerated individuals receive adequate protection during a pandemic.

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Deadly Force: How George Floyd’s Killing Exposes Racial Inequities in Minnesota’s Felony-Murder Doctrine Among the Disenfranchised, the Powerful, and the Police

March 8, 2021

View/Download PDF Version Greg Egan[1] I. Equity in Peril: How Felony-Murder Charging Discretion and Widely Varying Punishments are Deployed Against White Defendants, Defendants of Color, and Peace Officers Minnesota’s second-degree felony-murder statute represents a unique and creative charging mechanism that affords wide discretion to prosecutors. This makes it ripe for inequitable application. It is the…

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A Healthy Start: Minnesota Is Pioneering an Alternative to Prison Nurseries, and Other States Should Follow Its Lead

March 28, 2022

by Rachel Pokrzywinski*   In May 2021, Governor Tim Walz signed Minnesota’s Healthy Start Act (HSA) into law. The first of its kind in the United States, the HSA authorizes placement of pregnant and postpartum inmates into alternative housing—such as halfway houses and residential treatment facilities—with their newborns for up to one year after birth.…

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Birthright Citizenship: An Unqualified Right?

October 31, 2023

By: Elise Skarda* The concept of birthright citizenship has been mentioned in the news frequently recently. Many conservative presidential candidates are calling for an end to birthright citizenship,[1] though it is an unqualified constitutional right. So what is birthright citizenship, where does it come from, and why is it unconstitutional to qualify it? Birthright citizenship…

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The Surprising Cause of Increasingly Horrific Executions: Death Penalty Abolitionists

April 23, 2025

By: Kristin M. Boynton, Volume 43 Senior Managing Editor View/Download PDF Version: The Surprising Cause of Increasingly Horrific Executions – Death Penalty Abolitionists (Boynton) The January 2024 execution of Kenneth Smith garnered worldwide attention,[1] including an official statement by the United Nations High Commissioner that criticized the new method used by the State.[2] The UN…

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Out of the Cell and Into the Fire: Inherently Dangerous Prison Work Assignments, the Eighth Amendment’s Guarantee of Safe Conditions of Confinement, and California’s AB-2147

April 13, 2022

by River Lord[1]   Using the labor of inmates in the United States has a long and controversial tradition. Many observers have identified how higher rates of policing and incarceration among minority communities, coupled with the widespread use of inmate labor in exchange for sub-minimum wages, create a system of labor exploitation and racial oppression…

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Under Siege: The Legal Profession at a Crossroads

April 24, 2025

Incoming Volume 44 Editor-in-Chief Jaxon Alston and Professor June Carbone, Robina Chair for Law, Science, and Technology trace how the current attacks on lawyers, law firms, and the justice system began, examine why major law firms are capitulating to external pressures, and explore the ripple effects on pro bono representation and education. The very foundations…

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Ignoring Inequalities and Refusing to Consider Consequences: The Supreme Court’s Blocking of OSHA’s Emergency COVID Standard

March 31, 2022

By Brandon Vaca[1] On January 13, the six conservative Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court stayed (blocked) and effectively struck down the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) emergency vaccine-or-test standard (Standard) for employers.[2] The Court’s reasoning in its unsigned opinion ranges from vexing to troubling. As the three dissenting Justices pointed out, the Court…

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The Movement Lawyer of 2020

August 11, 2020

Image of a wall with spray painted text reading "I Can't Breathe"

Want to hear how two recent University of Minnesota Law grads chose to respond to the tragic killing of George Floyd? Click the link to learn more about the inspiration behind the “Breathless” podcast, created by Ian Taylor, Jr. (’19) and Haaris Pasha (’19).

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How We Got Here: Race, Police Use of Force, and the Road to George Floyd

April 1, 2021

Long before the killing of George Floyd, the United States has struggled to mitigate racially arbitrary use of force by the police. This article seeks to explain how we got to the killing of George Floyd. This article contends that that the law—especially the decisions of the Supreme Court and political choices made by politicians—has helped to enable the relatively unchecked use of force against people of color.

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Gentrification, Displacement, and Disparate Impact Liability: How Gentrification Theory is Not Cognizable Under the Fair Housing Act

May 2, 2022

by Adam Mikell*   In the United States, the topic of housing has an ugly history comprised of decades of government-sanctioned discrimination and segregation carried out through racially-motivated practices such as “neighborhood composition” rules, racial covenants, steering, and redlining. In 1968—the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement—the Fair Housing Act (FHA) was passed to…

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