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Health Care Civil Rights: Addressing the American Maternal Mortality Disparity Through Health, Law, and Policy
The United States is facing a pressing issue in maternal health, standing out as uniquely dangerous among similarly situated nations, with significant disparities in maternal mortality rates, particularly affecting Black American pregnant people. This paper, “Health Care Civil Rights: Addressing the American Maternal Mortality Disparity Through Health, Law, and Policy,” argues that by addressing the root cause of the Black Maternal Mortality Disparity (BMMD)—structural racism—and implementing rigorous, enforced standards of care, the United States can ensure safer childbirth experiences for Black pregnant people. Utilizing intersectional and anti-racist frameworks, the analysis identifies inferior medical care, particularly in diagnosing and treating preventable causes of death such as preeclampsia, and systemic failures as contributing causes of BMMD. The analysis further identifies legal and policy avenues—including civil rights enforcement under Section 1557, Congressional initiatives, enhanced Maternal Mortality Review Committees, standardized clinical protocols, and hospital accreditation—as pathways to reform, while acknowledging significant obstacles to enforcement and federal action. Evidence from California and other states indicates that robust, accountable implementation can substantially reduce mortality. Expanded support for Black midwives and doulas, patient education, and postpartum care are also identified as vital solutions. The paper concludes that while structural change is complex, immediate progress can be achieved at the state, institutional, and provider levels; coordinated, community-driven action and rigorous enforcement of standards are necessary to end preventable injustices in American maternity care.Gender and Consensus on the Courts
During group deliberation, women tend to be the harbingers of compromise, vying for consensus on even the most contentious topics. However, women cannot succeed in this endeavor if gender bias prevents their voices from being heard. In federal courts, collaboration is essential to reaching the simple majority needed to resolve a case. While the courts already function under norms of collegiality during deliberations, the practice of writing a separate opinion to acknowledge disagreement with a majority opinion remains relatively common. In this Article, I test two competing theories as to the effects of women judges on consensus. On one hand, I posit that women’s tendency toward democratized decision-making should lead to greater consensus. If women who are judges are more likely to compromise with their peers, it seems likely that case deliberation will be more consensual when women are part of the process. Alternatively, the possibility of gender bias might lead to greater levels of dissensus when a panel includes both men and women. If men are skeptical of positions taken by women and/or women perceive their voices as not being heard by men, dissensus may abound when women join panels. Using both empirical and qualitative evidence, I find support for both theories. Specifically, employing a dataset of more than 11,000 federal appellate opinions and 27,000 judge-case pairings, I find that the presence of women judges generally leads to greater dissensus on the courts. However, the data simultaneously indicate that all-woman panels reach the highest levels of consensus. A systematic analysis of the recorded oral histories of 29 federal appellate judges confirms that, while women may be more likely to pursue consensus building, they will sometimes fail, possibly due to perceptions of bias against them. However, this gendered dissensus may also simply be a byproduct of diverse deliberation that leads to more well-reasoned decision-making, a potentially desirable practice for the court.A Comparative Analysis of the Lack of Contractual Protections in Female Dominated Opportunities: Collegiate Competitive Dancers and Cheerleaders Compared to NCAA Student-Athletes and National Pageant Organization Titleholders Compared to Employees/Independent Contractors
The lack of contractual protections and regulations throughout female-dominated opportunities is abundantly clear in the collegiate competitive dance & cheer and the national pageant organization titleholders. Collegiate competitive dancers and cheerleaders have no standardized contractual requirements regarding their commitment to an academic institution or their engagement in NIL opportunities. Their NCAA recognized student-athlete counterparts, on the other hand, have extensive regulations and protections in place for both categories of contracts. In the pageant industry, pageant titleholders have no protection against the all-too-common procedural and substantive unconscionability of their service agreements, which can be found in confidentiality and arbitration clauses. In the parallel employment context, however, federal regulations and state case law alike protect members of the workforce from contracts with the same, or lower, levels of unconscionability that titleholders face. Action is needed to address this disadvantageous contractual trend. Institutional regulatory action from the individual colleges and universities and the individual pageant organizations is an attainable first step on the road to a solution. Action from governing bodies, such as the NCAA and the Corporation for National and Community Service, is another plausible launching pad for a long-term solution. The collegiate competitive dance and cheer and the national pageant organization titleholder landscapes are just two small facets of the much broader societal issue of the lack of contractual protections in female dominated opportunities, but imminent action is necessary to begin paving a way to resolve a long-standing inequity. Further areas of research include the loose protections professional cheerleaders receive from individual contractor agreements, while performing more synonymously with their player counterparts who are highly protected by the layers of regulations surrounding employee contracts.The Intersection of Wrongful Convictions and Gender in Cases Where Women Were Sentenced to Death or Life in Prison Without Parole
This Note examines National Registry of Exonerations data and discusses the prevalence of false confessions and presence of a child victim in cases of women who were convicted of murder, received a serious sentence, and were later exonerated. After looking at the cases of women exonerated after receiving death sentences or life without parole sentences in light of the prevalence of these factors, this Note argues that examination of the cases reveals that the presence of a false confession or a child victim may have contributed to some of the wrongful convictions where these factors may have led to the women being viewed as having failed to conform to society’s expectations for women. This Note then discusses why evidence that portrayed the women as having violated society’s expectations could not have been excluded at trial and why exclusion in future cases through the rules of evidence or new legislation is challenging. This Note concludes by arguing that an awareness of how gender can contribute to wrongful convictions or the imposition of harsher sentences can help attorneys and judges guard against gender affecting the outcomes of criminal proceedings.Resolutions Without Resolve: Turning Away from UN Security Council Resolutions to Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
In 2008, the United Nations first recognized rape as a war crime with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1820. Since then, the fight against conflict-related sexual violence has become a frequent subject of Security Council Resolutions. But what, if anything, has changed? Wartime sexual violence is still prevalent today and shows no signs of slowing down. This Note argues that Security Council Resolutions are not an effective method to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. The procedural weaknesses in passing Security Council Resolutions and the structure of the Security Council itself may do more harm than good to the efforts to end wartime sexual violence. Instead, this Note finds a solution in an unlikely realm: using voluntary pollution prevention programs as a template to address wartime sexual violence. In examining the parallels between the two issues, this Note suggests a new framework for addressing wartime sexual violence, relying on three factors in particular: adequate and consistent funding to key organizations, regular and credible monitoring of vulnerable communities, and the credible threat of enforcement.Criminal Record Relief for Human Trafficking Survivors: Analysis of Current State Statutes and the Need for a Federal Model Statute
This Note defines criminal record relief and analyzes the effectiveness of three state criminal record relief statutes at protecting trafficking survivors. This analysis is based on State Report Cards: Grading Criminal Record Relief Laws for Survivors of Human Trafficking by Polaris, a leading human trafficking nonprofit. It next discusses the absence of federal criminal record relief and how a statute at the federal level could provide relief for survivors with federal convictions while simultaneously providing a model for states to ensure their statutes incorporate best practices for record relief moving forward. This Note then discusses how Polaris’s report stops short of providing a model statute for states to draw from. Finally, this Note provides a best practice statute based on Polaris’s evaluation criteria and recommends it be added as an amendment to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.Prescription Restriction: Why Birth Control Must Be Over-the-Counter in the United States
This Note argues that it is harmful and unnecessary to require women to obtain prescriptions for access to hormonal birth control. Requiring a prescription is necessarily a barrier to access which hurts women and hamstrings the ability to dictate their own reproductive plans. It is also an irrational regulation in light of the relative safety of hormonal birth control pills, particularly progestin-only formulations, compared to other drugs readily available on the shelves. Leading medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, advocate for over-the-counter access to hormonal birth control. While acknowledging that not every woman will have positive outcomes taking hormonal birth control pills, this Note argues that women are capable of taking hormonal birth control as directed and are able to self-identify if they themselves are at risk for complications. Following a long line of cases that establish reproduction as a fundamental right in the United States, it follows that requiring a prescription for access can and should be analyzed under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clauses, particularly under the Undue Burden standard. Certain prerequisites, such as pelvic exams, once thought to be necessary to safely prescribe hormonal birth control, are now widely considered unnecessary in determining whether a particular woman can safely take birth control pills. This Note goes further and argues that such prerequisites are an unconstitutional method of holding vital medication hostage from women who desire to control their reproductive health.Contracting Around Gender Constructs: Transgender Men at Women’s Colleges
As the transgender community gains increasing visibility in society, women’s colleges have begun to address new questions about who is eligible to attend. One such question is whether students who come out as transgender men after matriculation are eligible to remain enrolled and graduate from these institutions. The main claims relevant to this discussion are (1) colleges’ right to retain their identity as all-women’s institutions; (2) the parallel rights of cisgender female students who explicitly choose to attend an all-women’s institution, and (3) transgender students’ competing right to avoid arbitrary or capricious dismissal based on gender identity. This Note posits that contract law provides a useful framework for colleges to evaluate this question since both express and implied contracts form the basis of the student- college relationship. Ultimately, this Note argues that, although solutions that satisfy all parties are impossible, harms can be minimized if transgender students are permitted to graduate and given appropriate support throughout the transition process, and other policies are adapted to address the concerns of cisgender female students.Removing Camouflaged Barriers to Equality: Overcoming Systemic Sexual Assault and Harassment at the Military Academies
The Education Amendments of 1972 introduced requirements to protect female students from discriminatory policies at post-secondary institutions. A portion of those amendments, commonly known as Title IX, require that no students be subjected to discrimination based on their sex by any educational institution or activity receiving federal financial assistance. An exemption under § 1681(a)(4), however, explicitly prohibits application of Title IX to any educational institution whose primary purpose is to train individuals for military service or the merchant marine. Although those students are still subject to stringent conduct standards, the service academies themselves are tethered to sex discrimination policies only by their goodwill, reputation, and the boundaries of the Constitution. Answering only to the Department of Defense (or Transportation, in the case of the United States Merchant Marine Academy) does not hold these institutions accountable to their students or to the American public. The academies’ attempts at combatting this widespread problem have been ineffective, and they continue to perpetuate a culture of sexual violence. This Note proposes the removal of exemption language from Title IX, or, alternatively, insists that the academies comply with mandatory reporting requirements under the Clery Act.Running from the Gender Police: Reconceptualizing Gender to Ensure Protection for Non-Binary People
Non-binary people who are discriminated against at work or school are in a unique and demoralizing position. Not only have some courts expressed reluctance to use existing antidiscrimination law to protect plaintiffs who are discriminated against based on their gender identity and not simply because they are men or women, in most states non-binary genders are not legally recognized. I argue that a fundamental right to self-identification grounded in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would provide non-binary plaintiffs with the ability to assert their gender in court and have that assertion carry legal weight, regardless of how friendly the Court is to queer rights issues. I argue that a fundamental right to selfidentification would require courts to give the same wide degree of deference to a plaintiff’s self-identification of their gender as they do to a plaintiff’s self-identification of their religious beliefs. This legal framework would prohibit courts from policing the gender of the parties before them and allow them only to assess whether the plaintiff’s gender-related beliefs are sincerely held. Such a legal framework would allow non-binary plaintiffs to bring claims under federal anti-discrimination law without worrying that the Court will refuse to recognize their gender as valid.