Civil Rights
Jurisprudence
Persons
United States
Health promotion and the First Amendment: government control of the informational environment. (1/45)
Government efforts to protect public health often include controlling health information. The government may proscribe messages conveyed by commercial entities (e.g., false or misleading), recommend messages from commercial entities (e.g., warnings and safety instructions), and convey health messages (e.g., health communication campaigns). Through well-developed, albeit evolving, case law, government control of private speech has been constrained to avoid impinging on such values as free expression, truthfulness, and autonomous decision making. No simple legal framework has been developed for the government's own health messages to mediate between the legitimate goals of health protection and these other values. Nevertheless, government recommendations on matters of health raise difficult social and ethical questions and involve important societal trade-offs. Accordingly, this article proposes legal and ethical principles relating to government control of the health information environment. (+info)Where the action really is: Medicaid and the disabled. (2/45)
Discussions of Medicaid tend to focus on low-income children and their mothers and the institutionalized elderly as the principal beneficiaries, but Medicaid spends more on the nonelderly disabled than on any other group. In the past two decades Medicaid has helped finance the deinstitutionalization of the mentally retarded and a growing proportion of the mentally ill, but implementation of the Olmstead decision has deflected advocates' attention from the more important issue of how managed care plans treat disabled Medicaid beneficiaries. (+info)The tenuous nature of the Medicaid entitlement. (3/45)
Although Medicaid is regarded as a federal entitlement program, nowhere does the Medicaid statute explicitly recognize a federal right of action to enforce recipients' rights. Arguably, the Supreme Court, rather than Congress, first recognized the right of Medicaid recipients to protection of federal law. A controversial 2001 federal court decision, however, called into question the continuing existence of federally enforceable Medicaid rights. Although this decision has been reversed, it illuminates the tenuous nature of the Medicaid entitlement, as do recent Supreme Court decisions narrowing federal rights. Congress should amend the Medicaid statute to ensure the rights of Medicaid recipients. (+info)Chevron v Echazabal: public health issues raised by the "threat-to-self" defense to adverse employment actions. (4/45)
In June of 2002, the US Supreme Court upheld a regulation that allows employers, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, to make disability-related employment decisions based on risks to an employee's own personal health or safety. Previous judicial decisions had allowed employers to make employment decisions based on the threat that a worker's medical condition posed to others but had not addressed the issue of risk posed to an employee's health by his or her own disability. The authors comment on the potential effects of the court's decision for occupational health practitioners charged with assessing the degree of risk and harm of a particular workplace environment and for public health efforts aimed at curbing workplace injury and sickness. (+info)Workers' liberty, workers' welfare: the Supreme Court speaks on the rights of disabled employees. (5/45)
On June 10, 2002, a unanimous US Supreme Court rejected the claim by Mario Echazabal that he had been denied his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act when Chevron USA had refused to employ him because he had hepatitis C. Chevron believed that Echazabal's exposure to hepatotoxic chemicals in its refinery would pose a grave risk to his health. This case poses critical questions about the ethics of public health: When, if ever, is paternalism justified? Must choice always trump other values? What ought to be the balance between welfare and liberty? Strikingly, the groups that came to Echazabal's defense adopted an antipaternalistic posture fundamentally at odds with the ethical foundations of occupational health and safety policy. (+info)Chevron v Echazabal: protection, opportunity, and paternalism. (6/45)
The Supreme Court, in Chevron v Echazabal, ruled that risks to a disabled worker, if established by an individualized medical assessment, can disqualify the worker from protections offered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This decision rejected the antipaternalist position of ADA advocates that workers with disabilities should be able to determine, through their own consent, the risks they will take. Such strong antipaternalism may not be compatible with the underlying justification for the protection of workers against health hazards. Stringent regulation of workplace hazards involves restricting the scope of consent to risk. Resolution of this conflict will depend on more careful examination of the degree to which individualized medical assessments avoid stereotyping and bias. (+info)Affirmative action: essential to achieving justice and good health care for all in America. (7/45)
Affirmative action is an established principle that brings fairness and justice to admissions policies and practices by setting goals that encourage and pressure institutions and individuals to create educational and professional opportunities for minorities and women, if it were not for affirmative action, we would waste the talents of countless individuals who would be discounted because they are minorities or women. The result would be a nation that is weaker because it would be segregated once again in a system in which white people and men would have the preponderance of opportunity and authority and in which access would be very limited for minorities and women. It may be time to reframe the argument for affirmative action in language that denotes its benefits to all Americans by increasing access for emerging majority citizens now and in the future. ADEA, academic dentistry, and the dental profession should continue to do everything it can to preserve the policies and practices of affirmative action, especially through the support of the University of Michigan admissions policies as challenged in the cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and in our own practices. (+info)The Supreme Court, abortion, and the jurisprudence of class. (8/45)
The US Supreme Court's decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey both protects a woman's liberty to choose to terminate her pregnancy and permits the state to make it more difficult for her to exercise her choice. In their opinion on the case, Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter eloquently defend constitutional protection of the right to make intimate decisions like continuing or ending a pregnancy. At the same time, they permit the state to try to persuade pregnant women not to have abortions and to make abortion harder to obtain and more costly, as long as the state's methods do not create an "undue burden" on the decision. Any restriction on abortion is a burden; whether it is "undue" (and therefore unconstitutional) depends on one's circumstances. The Court appears to view the difference between an undue burden and mere inconvenience from the perspective of privilege. The restrictions that were upheld may not significantly affect middle-class access to abortion, but they could prove insurmountable for many less privileged women. (+info)'Supreme Court Decisions' refer to the legal rulings made by the Supreme Court of the United States, which is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the US. These decisions are the final word on matters of federal law, including constitutional interpretation, and they establish precedents that guide future decision-making in federal and state courts. They can have significant impacts on various aspects of American society, politics, and law.
Civil rights are a group of rights and protections that guarantee equal treatment to all individuals, regardless of their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or other characteristics. These rights are enshrined in the laws and constitutions of various countries and include freedoms such as the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to equal protection under the law, and the right to freedom of speech, religion, and assembly.
In the United States, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark piece of legislation that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment, education, and access to public accommodations. Other important civil rights laws in the U.S. include the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which protects the right to vote, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities.
Violations of civil rights can take many forms, including discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and violence. Those whose civil rights have been violated may be entitled to legal remedies, such as damages, injunctions, or orders for relief.
I'm sorry for any confusion, but "Jurisprudence" is not a term typically used in medical definitions. Jurisprudence refers to the theory and philosophy of law, or the study of legal systems, principles, and practices. It is a subject that falls under the purview of lawyers, judges, and scholars of law. If you have any questions about medical terminology, I'd be happy to help with those!
In medical terms, "persons" is not a term that has a specific definition. It generally refers to an individual human being who is receiving medical care or attention. In legal and ethical contexts, the term "person" may refer more broadly to any entity (such as a corporation) that is recognized by law as having rights and responsibilities, but this usage is not typically found in medical discourse.
It's worth noting that there are some specific medical contexts where the term "person" may be used differently. For example, in discussions of end-of-life care or organ donation, the concept of "personhood" may be invoked to refer to the qualities or characteristics that make an individual human being unique and deserving of moral respect. However, these uses of the term are more philosophical than medical in nature.
I'm sorry for any confusion, but "United States" is a geopolitical entity, specifically the name of the country consisting of 50 states, and it is not a medical term or concept. Therefore, I can't provide a medical definition for it. If you have any questions related to health, medicine, or biology, I would be happy to try to help answer those!