Public Health Law

To successfully unlock FEMA funding for extreme heat emergencies, states and localities need to start tracking the true costs of responding

States and localities (towns and counties) have brought a range of sometimes-overlapping lawsuits against companies alleged to have contributed to the opioid epidemic, with some success. One major multi-district litigation (“MDL”) settlement involving three opioid distributors and one manufacturer included a provision connecting payment to states’ ability to ensure localities surrender their claims. Consistent with this provision, Georgia recently enacted legislation exting

This has been an understandably devastating week for those who care about the rule of law and precedent. The Supreme Court appears poised in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to reverse the due process and privacy protections of Roe v. Wade , undermining the reproductive autonomy of millions of American women. The leaked opinion, which is not final until issued, and could still change, would return the decision on the legality of abortions to the states. For many

Some of the Justices at SCOTUS have been reading author (and Sixth Circuit Chief Judge) Jeffrey Sutton. The Court’s per curiam decision...

We are delighted to share this post from a former Virginia legislative leader, David J. Toscano. This is the latest in our Field Dispatches series In her recent SLogLaw post “ Harrisburg COVID-19 Response Is No Model,” Meryl Chertoff provides a great explanation of Pennsylvania's response to the pandemic. Except for the use of a constitutional amendment pushed by Republicans in the Keystone state to constrain a Democratic governor, the dynamic is similar to what is occur

Following a practice that originated in Israel and Denmark before spreading more widely through Europe, several big “blue” cities in the USA now require or will soon require anyone entering and patronizing most public accommodations in their jurisdictions to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19. Because many of these regimes allow businesses to accept a smartphone app as proof of vaccination, and these apps are sometimes referred to as passports, this legal regime is

We’ve lifted up the work of SLoGLaw Blog contributors Rich Briffault and Erin Scharff on punitive pre-emption in earlier posts of this blog, and Sarah Swan provided a troubling case study out of Florida where the state tried to authorize the Governor and his handpicked Cabinet to reach in to local law enforcement budgets. Now comes an example out of California that shows the malicious result when industry (in this case, Big Sugar) gets enmeshed in undermining the imperio

On November 2, New York City voters are likely to elect Eric Adams as the city’s next mayor, a development that could herald a new era of local government experimentation in food policy, potentially with national implications. Adams’ views on policing have received a lot of media attention, and David Schleicher recently blogged here about Adams’ comments suggesting he favors a zoning budget-type approach to increase affordable housing. Adams’ interest in encouraging peopl

Yes, you heard right, a vaccination was mandated in Texas, as a condition for entry by Texas girls into public middle school, at age 11 or 12,. With thanks to Miriam Seifter, who reminded me of this in a footnote in her terrific work on Gubernatorial Administration. In 2007, then Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, issued RP-65 making Texas the first state in the nation to mandate a vaccination against the Human Papillomavirus Virus (HPV) Perry’s Executive Order was

Although one might hope that during a global pandemic, governments would be united against the common enemy of a deadly virus, the...