Public Health
Texas Legislature doubles down on supporting oil and gas at the cost of renewable energy post-freeze
February 27, 2024
By: Wills Layton* Background In February of 2021, the state of Texas experienced a freeze that the electric system, consisting of electric sources such as wind and gas and more traditional oil and gas power plants, was not prepared to effectively combat.[1] Nearly half of all Texans faced some type of disruption to water access,…
Continue ReadingNew Legislation Seeks to End Marriage Penalty for Supplemental Security Income
March 11, 2024
By: Skylar Mayhew* Every month, people with disabilities are eligible to receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI).[1] SSI is a disability program funded and administered through the Social Security Administration.[2] The amount that a person with a disability receives each month can be lowered depending on several factors.[3] One factor that troubles advocates is the substantial…
Continue ReadingWho’s Benefiting from Attorney General Settlement Agreements?
June 3, 2021
Anna Berglund* Lately, when we read about state Attorneys General (AGs) in the news, we hear about them suing battleground states to try to overturn election results[1] or suing the Trump administration 138 times—almost double the number of times the Obama and Bush administrations were sued—over various policies.[2] Although state AGs are increasingly ramping…
Continue ReadingAn Ongoing Struggle: Police Brutality and Native Americans
April 3, 2024
By: William Rauschenberg Per capita, Native Americans are among the most common victims of police violence of any minority group in the United States.[1] Depending on the year and statistics used, Indigenous Americans are either the most at risk or second behind Black Americans.[2] This is a striking figure that, like many Indian issues, is…
Continue ReadingMental Health & Criminal Justice: An Interview with Kelly Mitchell and Professor JaneAnne Murray
October 11, 2021
Interview by Sarah Coleman* October 3-9, 2021 was Mental Health Awareness Week. The United States’ prison and criminal justice systems are deeply interconnected with mental healthcare and mental illness. For many individuals, a mental illness diagnosis and subsequent treatment aren’t made available to them until after they come in contact with the criminal justice system.…
Continue ReadingThe Rise and Fall of Legalized Recreational Marijuana in South Dakota
January 12, 2022
by Lottie James* By the late evening of November 3, 2020, it had become abundantly clear that a majority of South Dakotans support the legalization of both medical and recreational marijuana use. Two separate initiatives related to the legalization of marijuana usage were on the same ballot, and both initiatives passed with a majority affirmative…
Continue ReadingHow a New Ohio Law and Other State Reforms Are Changing the Landscape of Mental Health and Criminal Justice
January 24, 2022
By Bailey Martin* In 2021, Ohio became the only active death penalty state with a law that allows for resentencing of people on death row who have serious mental health conditions. While this kind of law provides an important starting point for thinking about mental health and criminal justice, courts have much further to go to protect all persons with mental health conditions from disparate impacts in the justice system.
Continue ReadingWe Finally (Kind of) Understand COVID – What Does That Mean at the Voting Booth?
February 1, 2022
By Rob Grimsley* When the Coronavirus first went viral, most Americans agreed that public spaces needed to be shut down in order to slow the spread and begin to understand what we were dealing with. However, as 2020 was an election year, there was soon speculation as to how to handle voting. Traditionally, voting had…
Continue ReadingAttack on the Right to Choose
April 12, 2022
By Laura Gustafson* A person’s right to choose has been under attack by state actions for some time, making headlines as the Supreme Court rules on bills restricting access to abortion. These bills can inflict great harm on people and attack the right to choose, but there is another very real threat that often goes…
Continue ReadingThe Arsenic Triangle of South Minneapolis
May 31, 2022
Cedar Weyker discusses ongoing public health and environmental concerns caused by the “arsenic triangle” in South Minneapolis.
Continue ReadingEmergency Intellectual Property Reform: COVID-19 and Vaccines
The healthcare industry, like others, relies on patent and trade secret law to protect sensitive and profitable information. This blog discusses the extent to which these laws should apply, though, to life-saving vaccines during a global pandemic such as COVID-19.
Continue ReadingReforming the Troubled Teen Industry
November 30, 2022
By Alida Weidensee* Imagine yourself as a teenager. You wake up in the middle of the night to adult strangers in your bedroom. Maybe there are police officers too. These strangers force you to go with them, telling you that there is “a choice to do this the easy way or hard way.” You might…
Continue Reading“It’s Absolutely Immoral”: The Denial of Mental Health Treatment in U.S. Prisons
January 9, 2023
Staff member Nicole Carter interrogates why prison inmates’ mental health needs are neglected in this new blog post.
Continue ReadingUnhoused and Handcuffed
January 13, 2023
By Eleanor Khirallah Under the guise of addressing homelessness and mental illness in New York City, on Tuesday, November 28, 2022, Mayor Eric Adams announced a new directive that allows the involuntary hospitalization of people suspected to be mentally ill on the street or subway. The city directive authorizes peace officers and police officers to…
Continue ReadingThe Right to Choose From An Empty Shelf: Anti-Abortionists Sue to Remove FDA Approval of Crucial Medication
March 28, 2023
Staff Member Bethany Jewison analyzes a recent lawsuit where multiple anti-abortion organizations seek to repeal the FDA’s approval of an important abortion drug, mifepristone.
Continue ReadingPrescribing “Justice”? How the Court’s Stay in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine Demonstrates the Dangerous Growth of Policy-Driven Adjudication in Federal Courts
May 16, 2023
By Evelyn Doran* In August 2022, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) filed its articles of incorporation in Amarillo, Texas.[1] Three months later, it filed a complaint in the District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the federal district court that serves Amarillo and the surrounding region.[2] In this complaint, it alleged that the…
Continue ReadingPunished Twice: Opioid Users Increasingly Handed Harsh Sentences for Friends’ Deaths
December 1, 2023
By: Bethany Jewison* A new phase of the opioid crisis. Jarret MacCasland and his fiancé Flavia Cardenas shared heroin on her 19th birthday.[1] Flavia tragically passed away and Jarret, who was only a few years older, was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for the “murder” of Flavia.[2] Similarly, a 17-year-old…
Continue Reading