Fact Sheet

Law and policy play a critical role in shaping health outcomes especially when it comes to racial health equity. While legislative actions and trends matter, it is also important to understand the role of the courts in altering legal landscapes in ways that can positively or negatively impact racial health disparities. This fact sheet highlights four 2023 U.S. Supreme Court cases with examples of how each potentially impacts racial health equity. It also provides a further examination of two cases of the cases that can be classified as wins for racial health equity.

The Network has identified at least eleven states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) that have now passed laws that seek to keep health data relating to abortion out of the hands of those that would seek to use them against patients and their providers merely for seeking, receiving, or providing reproductive health care. This factsheet explores common themes and creative solutions in state and District of Columbia laws aimed at protecting the privacy of reproductive health records.

Since 2020, states across the country have introduced and passed bills that prohibit or significantly limit participation by students who are transgender. Curtailing participation in school sports restricts access not only to healthful activities, but also to the physical, psychological, and academic benefits associated with them. Of these laws, at least eight have been challenged in state or federal courts on constitutional grounds. This fact sheet provides an overview of key trends in legal challenges to states’ restriction of transgender students’ participation in sports.

Judicial deference is a legal principle that has historically respected the knowledge and experience of governmental public health actors, including public health agencies. However, recent attempts to dismantle judicial deference could have a negative impact on health departments without explicitly targeting public health. This fact sheet introduces the concept of judicial deference and its role in health agency administrative decision-making.

Backlash to public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in the passing of bills designed to curb state and local public health authority. Many of these bills misconstrued critical definitions, legal concepts, and sources of law, while also conflating the roles of the branches of government. This fact sheet provides definitions of legal concepts, clarifying information of the roles of certain government officials with a focus on the source and breadth of public health authority granted to the County Health Officers and local Boards of Health in Maryland.

Text messaging can provide health departments with an efficient means of sharing timely public health information such as guidance, announcements, and emergency alerts. While texting can be an effective tool for protecting the public’s health, it raises important privacy issues that health departments must consider when developing texting initiatives. This fact sheet examines one piece of that legal framework: the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and regulations implemented by the Federal Communications Commission that govern certain kinds of texting.

The influx of new customers created by the legalization of adult-use cannabis can place a strain on a state’s cannabis supply. This increased demand can present a challenge to the state’s medical cannabis system and potentially reduce patient access to medical cannabis. This fact sheet examines various state policies aimed at protecting patient access to medical cannabis.

Access to timely data is essential for local health departments to provide critical public health interventions. Unfortunately, public health data is typically routed to state agencies where legal barriers, both actual and perceived, to sharing that data back to local health departments are encountered. The Illinois legislature recently passed sweeping legislation regarding access to public health data by local health departments. This fact sheet examines this new legislation and how it may transform local public health access to key data.

By one estimate, thirty-five percent of transgender youth find themselves in a state with laws banning gender affirming care. However, the Network has identified at least thirteen laws across ten states and the District of Columbia that seek to protect access to gender-affirming care as well as reproductive health care in the same act. This factsheet takes a closer look at legislation that couples transgender rights with reproductive rights.

Substantial and important changes to reimbursements for school-based Medicaid services were made in 2023 due to the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. This resource explains the new federal law and provides an overview of various state legislative approaches to Medicaid coverage for school nursing services.

As a result of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs, advocates on both sides of the abortion issue turned to state constitutions to determine the contours of a right to abortion or to make clear no such right exists under state law. When abortion was on the ballot in 2022, voters in several states rallied to enshrine the right to abortion in state constitutions and rejected attempts to further restrict abortions in their states. In the wake of these successful ballot measures, state legislators throughout the country have sought to amend ballot initiative processes ahead of the 2024 elections. This fact sheet outlines recent proposed amendments by several states that are intended to thwart pro-abortion ballot initiatives.

In Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden, the Eleventh Circuit vacated a lower court decision invalidating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) transportation mask mandate. Because the mask mandate would have ended on its own terms when the federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency expired on May 11, 2023, the Eleventh Circuit determined the case was moot. This Q&A describes the doctrine of mootness and the implications of this case.