Making Mandatory: Vaccines in the Workplace

(Source) According to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, after hitting a peak in early January 2021 of over 300,000 new American coronavirus infections in a single day, the number of new cases began falling precipitously over the ensuing months, with the seven-day moving average dropping to 56,000 by late March. Not coincidentally, COVID vaccination efforts in the same time frame have been ramping up—as of February 1, 2021, 32.2 million vaccines were administered in the U.S., with President Biden aiming to vaccinate 1.5 million more Americans each day. With over 200 million doses in under two months, the Biden administration’s original goal has been far exceeded, as 43% of Americans have already received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine as of the date of this writing. A consequence of the vaccination objective progressing at such an expeditious rate is that the overnight metamorphosis from in-person to remote work will likely begin to revert quickly as a number of large corporations, including Amazon, Apple, and Goldman Sachs, are expecting their workers to make a return to the office by midsummer.   While Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has envisioned that half of the 48,000 employees at his company could be moving to [read more]

Zooming in on Student Surveillance: Protecting Student Privacy in the Age of COVID-19

(Source) Exams are stressful even under the best of conditions. Exams taken virtually, as so many students over this previous year have found out, have presented a brand new set of challenges that can magnify student stress. But, imagine for a moment that you cannot even get into your exam, because the exam software does not recognize your face, or that the eye-movement tracking system built into the exam software could mean that looking away momentarily from your computer screen would result in you being flagged for cheating. This is, in fact, the reality that ample students have faced over the past year of virtual learning and testing. Indeed, when COVID-19 hit in early 2020, teachers and their students, from kindergarten to graduate school, had to quickly pivot to virtual learning and testing modalities. While this transition was certainly a necessity to keep students, their teachers, and their families safe, virtual learning and testing nonetheless raises civil liberties concerns around privacy and freedom of speech and perpetuates inequality for those who are people of color, low income, non-binary, or neurodivergent. In the United States, unlike in other countries, there is no “national” privacy law. Rather, a patchwork of laws make [read more]

Running Out of Beds: How COVID-19 Demonstrates the Need to Repeal State Certificate of Need Laws

(Source) During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, states struggled in part because the disease caused demand for hospital beds to outstrip supply. Around one month into the pandemic, in New York City, for example, only about 300 intensive care unit (“ICU”) beds remained available. States reacted by creating more medical facilities, and New York City mobilized public and private hospitals to create more beds and ICUs. The sudden spike in demand for medical care brought into question existing certificate of need laws. Certificate of need (“CON”) laws require anyone who wants to construct a new healthcare facility to obtain permission from the state first. The state often requires that the applicant pay a fee and establish that there is a public need. Many states also allow interested parties to object to the new facility. New York passed the first certificate of needs of law in the mid-1960s. The idea behind these laws was to allow states, instead of the market, determine whether there is a public need for additional medical facilities. In normal times, perhaps the idea of states restraining the spread of medical facilities may make sense. However, these laws hampered states’ responses to [read more]

Immunity Passports: A Silver Bullet or a Security Blanket?

(Source) As COVID-19 infection rates remain high, many wonder when and how life will return to normal. The policies currently in place to limit the number of new infections have primarily focused on restricting movement and access to public spaces. While this has helped limit the spread of the virus, it has also resulted in one of the largest global economic recessions in decades. The combination of unemployment, fragmented trade streams, a reduction in spending, and a reduction in local and international travel has led experts to predict a global economic contraction of GDP of just over 5%.  Leaders in several countries, most notably Chile, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, have considered the creation of immunity passports as a potential strategy to safely reopen and stabilize their nation’s economies. An immunity passport is an official document that would certify when an individual has acquired immunity, either through infection and subsequent recovery or by vaccination, to COVID-19. While immunity passports could provide national and local governments with a way to return to pre-pandemic life, several practical, legal, and ethical considerations raise questions about the efficacy of such a program. If governments hope that immunity passports will effectively limit [read more]

Evictions Are Coming: An In-Depth Look at the COVID-19 Eviction Crisis

(Source) In the United States, nearly 1.4 million people per year spend time in a shelter, and there are more homeless people than the population of some rural states. For those living in city centers, it is an unignorable issue. A home is a foundation on which people build their lives—losing the place you call home can have serious impacts on one’s ability to obtain financial stability and can have impacts on one’s mental health. When the COVID-19 (“COVID”) pandemic hit American shores, it not only devastated the health of communities but also their financial stability, specifically impacting communities of color more severely. During the hardest hit months of the pandemic, over fourteen million Americans filed for unemployment. This spike in unemployment meant families lost the ability to financially provide for themselves, and for many of them, the debt of every day expenses, such as rent, began to accumulate. The looming threat of eviction hangs over many of these families who worry that they will be just another homeless statistic. This piece explores the eviction moratoriums the federal government and the New York state government put in place and analyzes the protections they provide to tenants. It is important to [read more]

A Dodger’s Dilemma: The Possibility of Civil Liability for Justin Turner’s World Series Celebration

(Source) The Los Angeles Dodgers finally broke “The Curse of ‘88” and won the World Series on October 27, 2020, beating the Tampa Bay Rays four games to two. While the Dodger’s Fall Classic win certainly attracted a large source of attention, a significant portion of news centered not on the game itself but instead on the actions of one player in particular. Justin Turner, the Dodger’s third baseman, played a crucial role in the team’s World Series run and subsequent victory, but was mysteriously pulled from the series-clinching game after the seventh inning. The MLB discovered midgame that a COVID-19 test Turner took earlier that day had come back positive and immediately notified the Dodgers, who promptly pulled their third baseman out of the game. As per player and League agreed-upon protocols, the team then ordered Turner to remain in self-isolation. However, after the Dodgers secured their first World Series win in thirty-two years, Turner disregarded these instructions and joined his team for the on-field celebration. Although Turner initially wore a mask when he returned to Globe Life Field, he was seen with his mask off on multiple occasions, including while sitting in close proximity to his teammates for [read more]

No More Zoom Law School?: The Constitutionality of Mandatory Vaccine Laws

(Source) “We’re very close to [the COVID-19] vaccine,” former President Trump stated in a press brief on September 16, 2020, suggesting that a vaccine could be ready by election day. Then-President-elect Biden responded that he did not trust the President to determine when a vaccine would be ready for the public. On November 9, 2020, Pfizer, as part of Operation Warp Speed, announced early results from its COVID-19 vaccine trial that suggest that the their vaccine was more than 90 percent effective. Since the election, President Biden has been more aggressive in ensuring that more vaccines are available by pledging to purchase 200 million addition vaccine doses. Assuming that the vaccine can be delivered safely and effectively, can the state and federal governments require such vaccine? State Government The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any state from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” However, the liberty protected by the Constitution is not absolute. The Supreme Court has recognized that a state can exercise its police power by enacting reasonable regulations to protect public health and safety. The Supreme Court first addressed the constitutionality of mandatory vaccine laws in 1905. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the Court [read more]

Work or Child Care: What Employers Can Do to Alleviate Burdens on Working Mothers

(Source) Facebook and Twitter have announced that they will allow their employees to work from home indefinitely, and other companies are considering adopting a similar policy. Remote work can benefit both employees and employers as employees no longer have to commute and employers can cut costs in rent. However, remote work can also be a source of issues. For example, it can exacerbate what is already an unequal distribution of domestic work on women. Prior to the stay-at-home orders in response to COVID-19, women consistently spent more hours on housework and child care than men. In addition, when women have children, they are less likely to be hired for jobs and likely to be paid less than their male colleagues. This is referred to as the motherhood penalty and exists not because mothers become less productive but because employers expect to them to be. The impact of COVID-19 on the distribution of domestic work isn’t clear, although one survey found that the distribution of housework and child care has not become more equitable as a result of stay-at-home orders. Additionally, McKinsey & Company released a report documenting the effects of COVID-19 on working women and found that one in four [read more]

Increased Tuition for an Inferior Product: The University’s Guide to Not Caring

(Source) Imagine you decided to go to the dealership to buy yourself a brand-new car. After carefully researching the model and make of car and shopping around for a good deal, you finally decide to make the purchase. When the car gets delivered, you are excited to take it out for a drive, only to realize that the dealer has sent you a Vespa (an electric scooter). You complain to the dealer and they tell you to “make the best” out of a bad situation. You might think this is ridiculous, but it is in fact the experience of almost every university-enrolled student during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a poorly-kept secret that tuition rates in the United States have risen at an alarming pace. In 1963, the average cost of attending college was $9,918 (adjusted for inflation), while in 2017, the average cost was $23,091. This precipitous increase has led students to borrow alarmingly high amounts and at increasing rates, resulting in a cumulative student loan debt teetering over $1.5 trillion. Today, students are leaving universities crippled by student loans and, in many cases, unable to pay them back. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 10.8% of [read more]

Sunshine Is Still the Best Disinfectant: How the Cornell First Amendment Clinic and the New York Times Fought to Access COVID-19 Demographic Data

(Source) As the coronavirus pandemic began to sweep through the United States in the spring of 2020, outbreaks in cities with significant Black and Latino communities led some to question whether communities of color might be at a heightened risk of both infection and death from COVID-19. As the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) stated in its April 2020 letter to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Robert M. Redfield, “[c]ommunities of color continue to disproportionately suffer health inequities due to the history of racism and oppression in the United States,” making these communities particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. At the time, state public health departments had begun releasing data confirming these suspicions. Data from Wisconsin, for example, showed that in Milwaukee County, African Americans accounted for almost half of the county’s coronavirus cases and 81% of deaths, despite making up only 26% of the county’s population. This data provided only a partial picture of the outbreak, however, and critics argued that relying on states to release demographic data and the lack of publicly available national demographic data would continue to hamper efforts to develop a robust public health response in low-income communities and communities of [read more]
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