Health Care Access

The Trump administration tried to roll back health care non-discrimination protections

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a final rule that attempts to roll back Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Section 1557 is the non-discrimination provision of the ACA, protecting against discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, and disability in health care.

The Obama administration clearly defined “sex” to include gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy-related decisions. HHS’s final rule removed those explicit protections for LGBT people and people who are pregnant or have had an abortion. In doing so, it threatened to exacerbate misogynistic, anti-Black, and anti-transgender biases in and existing obstacles to accessing health care.

A Supreme Court ruling took some potential anti-LGBT impact out of the final rule. (The ruling, discussed below, held that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.) However, the final rule is still deeply harmful. It drastically limits the types of health care plans and providers covered by Section 1557. It eliminates express protections against pregnancy- or abortion-related discrimination. It also removed an important language access requirement that providers and insurers notify people with limited English proficiency of their rights to interpretation and translated materials. The final rule is being challenged in the courts.

California insurance policies must cover Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP)

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara issued a directive that all insurance companies must provide Californians coverage for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) without cost sharing, prior authorization, or step therapy. PrEP is a daily medicine that prevents HIV transmission.

Insurance companies will have to cover services necessary to begin and maintain the PrEP regimen without any out-of-pocket costs from the patient. The directive includes all people, including young people, and aligns California with final recommendations issued by the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) last year.

Sexual & Reproductive Health, Rights, & Justice

Tennessee lawmakers approve a near-total abortion ban

The Tennessee state legislature passed a cruel and expansive abortion ban that would make it practically impossible to receive abortion care in the state. The law would ban abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, well before many people know they are pregnant. (Conservative lawmakers have disingenuously called these “fetal heartbeat” laws—despite the fact that at six weeks gestation, there is no heart, no heartbeat, nor a fetus. The only thing that can be measured is certain electrical activity in an embryo.)

The law also requires providers force patients to undergo an ultrasound, show and describe that ultrasound to the patient, and provide the patient with dubious, unproven information. Like so many six-week abortion bans before it, this law will be challenged in the courts.

Ending Criminalization

Police reform is happening around the nation–and advocates are demanding more

An immense number of police reforms have been introduced or passed on the federal, state, and local level over the past month. These reforms come in the wake of national uprisings sparked by the murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery by the police or white vigilantes. As PWN has explained elsewhere, the U.S. was founded on violence and the labor, exploitation, suffering, control, and murder of Black and Indigenous/First Nations people.

This legacy of state-sanctioned violence against Black bodies has been upheld and perpetuated in our institutions and systems; in our laws and policies; in our government and agencies.

Many of the policy changes outlined below represent incremental reform to policing in the U.S. Police abolition and prison abolition groups have been calling instead for visionary and transformative policy solutions. Learn more about the differences between police reform and abolition at #8toAbolition.


 

Category

Description: This is a non-exhaustive list of police-related policy updates. It was last updated June 24, 2020.

Disbandment of police

Defunding and dismantling the police is a key step in crafting a society without police or prisons. This month nine members of the Minneapolis city council – a veto-proof majority – announced their intent to dismantle the city’s police department. They have pledged to build a new public safety system for the city. The Austin, TX, city council voted unanimously to decrease the police department’s budget next year but did not specify by how much.

Restrictions to the “where,” “why” and “how” of policing

  • No police in school: Public school boards in Minneapolis (MI) and Denver (CO), as well as Portland (OR) Mayor Tom Wheeler have announced they will remove police from public schools. California lawmakers are demanding a similar ban statewide.

  • Mental health not police: San Francisco will replace police with unarmed, trained professional in response to non-criminal issues, including mental health issues, the homeless, and school discipline. Los Angeles (CA), Albuquerque (NM), and Portland (OR) are considering similar proposals.

  • Ban “no-knock” warrants: “No-knock” warrants allow the police to force their way into someone’s home without knocking, generally for a drug-related search. It is an extreme and risky tactic that raises the risk of violence. In Louisville (KY), the Metro Council passed “Breonna’s Law,” which bans the use of no-knock warrants and requires police use cameras when serving warrants.

  • Ban chokeholds: California, Colorado, New York, Dallas (TX), Houston (TX), and Minneapolis (MI) join a number of states and municipalities in outlawing the use of police chokeholds—a tactic whereby police put their arm around someone’s neck to restrict airflow. Large police departments, such as the Los Angeles Police Department and New York Police Department have banned the deadly neck restraint for more than a decade. Nonetheless, multiple people have been killed by officers using a chokehold during arrest since the bans went in place.

Police Accountability

  • Justice in Policing Act: Congressional Democrats have introduced the Justice in Policing Act. Along with banning chokeholds and certain no-knock warrants, the bill contains several provisions that would reform police accountability and transparency. It would establish a federal registry to track police misconduct, restrict the application of qualified immunity—a legal shield that can protect even egregious police actions—and require the use of body-worn and dashboard cameras for most federal police officers.

  • Repeal of 50-a: New York lawmakers have repealed a state law that was repeatedly used to shield police misconduct and disciplinary records from the general public. The repeal of 50-a means disciplinary records will now be disclosed, increasing transparency of and accountability for police violence.  

Bans on certain weapons

  • Tear gas: The use of chemical weapons, such as tear gas, is prohibited in warfare under the Geneva Protocol and the 1994 Chemical Weapons Convention. Nevertheless, tear gas remains a weapon police in the U.S. use against civilians. A number of cities, states and territories have passed laws to end or strictly curb that practice, including Colorado, Washington D.C., Seattle (WA), Charlotte (NC), Portland (OR), Columbus (OH), Olympia (OR), Iowa City (IA), and Austin (TX). A U.S. House bill, H.R. 7221, would also prohibit federal law enforcement from possessing chemical weapons.

  • Rubber bullets: Rubber bullets and other so-called “nonlethal weapons” can cause devastating injuries, including blindness and death. Localities that have banned some form of projectile weapons include Washington D.C., Austin (TX), Seattle (WA) and San Jose (CA).

  • Sonic weapons: Long range acoustic devices (LRADs) are a sound weapon that can emit loud, targeted bursts of sound severe enough to cause physical pain and permanent hearing loss. Seattle (WA) and Portland (OR) have banned the use of LRADs as a weapon against crowds.

  • Military-grade equipment: Several federal programs—most notably the 1033 Program—allow the federal government to transfer military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement for little to no cost. This military-to-police pipeline has further militarized local law enforcement by giving them access to dangerous, inappropriate gear such as grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and military drones. Washington D.C., has banned the acquisition of certain military equipment, and San Francisco must get rid of tear gas, bayonets, and tanks by 2021. Lawmakers in the U.S. Congress, New York State, and Pittsburgh (PA) are also considering restricting access to certain military-grade weapons.

Restrictions on surveillance technology

Law enforcement has been employing new and increasingly invasive surveillance technologies such as facial recognition, drones, and cell-site stimulators (otherwise known as “stingrays”). Such technologies have been used to surveil BIPOC communities and raise serious human rights concerns around racial discrimination, privacy, and freedom of expression. These concerns have led, for example, San Francisco and Oakland to prohibit government use of facial recognition software. More recently, Boston banned the use of facial surveillance technology, and New York City passed a bill to ensure more transparency in their use of surveillance technologies.

Repeal of anti- mask laws

Eighteen states have laws that punish people who wear face coverings in public. These “anti-mask laws” have been used to target Dakota Pipeline, Black Lives Matter, and anti-fascism protestors. They pose a heightened public health and criminalization risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 35 cities and states across the U.S. have orders in place requiring people wear face masks meaning in some areas, people could be both required and prohibited from wearing a face covering in public. On June 9, the Washington, D.C., city council unanimously repealed its anti-mask law.

 

The Supreme Court rejects the Trump administration’s attempt to end the DACA Program

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Trump administration’s attempt to abruptly terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA) was arbitrary, capricious, and ultimately unlawful. DACA was created in 2012 to give young people who have grown up in the U.S. without documentation the chance to work, apply for some forms of identification, and build a life without fear of deportation. 

Ever since Trump attempted to end the program in September 2019, almost 670,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. before 2007 at age 15 or younger have been in legal limbo. Although the Trump administration can try to end DACA again, the process is long and would nearly certainly extend past November 2020.

For now, the administration will continue to accept DACA renewal applications and should begin accepting new applications. Please see this notice from the National Immigration Law Center for more information.

LGBTQ Rights, Safety and Justice

Supreme Court decision ensures employment discrimination protections for LGBT people

In a landmark decision for legal equality in the workplace, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that employers cannot discriminate against employees because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The decision makes clear that LGBTQ people are, and should be, protected from discrimination under federal sex discrimination law. Please see a fuller account of this decision in PWN’s statement here.

This ruling could have significant ripple effects. The Trump administration finalized a rule (discussed above) that attempts to erase non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people from Section 1557 of the ACA. However, now that the Supreme Court has affirmed that discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination, it will be hard to argue why the same interpretation of sex discrimination wouldn’t apply to Section 1557. Nevertheless, attacks on and violence against LGBTQ people, and especially Black and brown LGBTQ people, are real and continuous. This decision is an important step forward, but there is much work to be done.


Elections Update

Iowa governor will restore voting rights for people who have completed a felony sentence

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds announced that she would issue an executive order before the November 2020 election to automatically restore voting rights to people who have completed felony sentences. Iowa is the only remaining state in the U.S. with a permanent voting ban for anyone convicted of a felony offense. The only way to restore voting rights in the state is to individually petition the governor’s office.

The executive order could restore voting rights for approximately 2.2 percent of Iowa’s population, and Black Iowans would disproportionately regain the right to vote. However, it is not yet clear what the order will look like. Earlier this year Reynolds signed legislation that would limit which formerly incarcerated people could vote and condition the right to vote on paying restitution.

Other Updates