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When “Empty is not Closed”: Organizing Efforts to (Officially) Close St. Louis’ Infamous Workhouse
Get PDFDespite years of community organizing, legal advocacy, and policy change to close St. Louis’ Medium Security Institution, the jail has reopened. In this article, Brianna Coppersmith provides a brief history of the campaign to close the jail, commonly called the Workhouse, and discusses what its reopening might mean for related pending litigation.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lawjournalonline/1073/thumbnail.jp
Should We Discriminate Among Discriminations?
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the complexities of rationing needed health care in a pandemic. It has also revealed deep, structural inequities in health care systems and societies, with certain disadvantaged groups experiencing alarmingly disproportionate rates of infection. A number of anti-discrimination statutes exist to ameliorate some of these historical inequities in the United States. Under federal law, health care facilities receiving federal funding may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin; disability; age; or sex. Three of these forms of discrimination were already prohibited by statutes that have been in effect for nearly fifty years: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (race, color, and national origin), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (disability), and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975 (age). In 2010, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) referenced these three statutes and a fourth, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (sex), in a prohibition of all of these forms of discrimination by health care facilities receiving federal funding.
Substantially different bodies of case law have been developed for each statute, spanning the fifty years these statutes have been in effect. The ACA’s juxtaposition of the four presents a puzzle with profound legal, policy, social, and ethical implications: Does Section 1557 bring these four anti-discrimination statutes together in order to harmonize them, offering a common approach to anti-discrimination in health care for all categories? Or should there continue to be differences among how discrimination is understood for these different protected categories? Using the examples of crisis care standards and vaccine allocation, this Article explores this puzzle in interpreting Section 1557. To do so, this Article details important differences among the statutes, including their approach to disparate impact discrimination and whether they have been interpreted to permit suits by private individuals for damages. This Article also explores the legislative histories of the Age Discrimination Act and the ACA itself. This Article concludes that Section 1557 reveals but does not resolve important questions about whether there are legally relevant reasons to discriminate among discriminations
Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act Litigation in Federal Courts: Evaluating the Standing Doctrine in Privacy Contexts
Get PDFBiometric technology, used to identify individuals based on their unchangeable and unique attributes such as fingerprints or facial geometry, has become commonplace in modern life. In Illinois, the use of biometric information by private organizations is regulated by the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (“BIPA”), which came into effect in 2008 as the nation’s first state biometric information privacy statute. BIPA is unique in that it includes a private right of action and provides for recovery of liquidated damages where the statute is violated, which has resulted in plaintiffs bringing steadily increasing numbers of class-action suits under the law. This note examines, in three parts, the current circuit split regarding Article III standing in federal courts that has arisen from BIPA litigation where only procedural BIPA violations are alleged (i.e., where there was a technical violation of the law which purportedly caused no direct harm to the plaintiff). It first explores the history and provisions of BIPA and federal litigation brought under the statute. The note next examines federal jurisdiction over BIPA suits, current Article III jurisprudence, and the history of the circuit split, including how standing has been determined in BIPA suits in the Second, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits. Finally, the note hypothesizes how the Supreme Court might resolve this split in a future ruling, analyzes the impact such a resolution could have, and provides an opinion on the correct resolution
Utilizing the Municipal Land Reutilization Law: Why St. Louis City Should Take Control of Every Abandoned Property
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Avoiding Federal and State Constitutional Limitations in Taxation
Get PDFThis article reviews some federal and state constitutional law challenges to tax legislation in the US and considers how taxing and other revenue raising legislation tends to withstand constitutional challenge.Part I of this article examines instances in which the Supreme Court reviewed state taxing laws for conflict with the Constitution and overruled its earlier decisions in similar cases. One case involving a poll or capitation tax worked its way through the courts as the Constitution was being amended to prevent the states from using a poll tax in the future. Another case from 2018 resolves a longstanding tax collection and avoidance problem with state sales taxes. Part II focuses on a single longstanding Supreme Court precedent limiting federal tax law under the Constitution which Congress increasingly has not followed. The decision and recent congressional action is contextual in the current discussions of other taxing proposals. Part III considers some areas in which constitutional limitations exist but legislatures and courts seem to have no interest in addressing the limitations. Part IV conclude