A motion for an interlocutory injunction was brought to prevent the City of Toronto from enforcing its By-law that prohibited camping and erecting tents, structures, and shelters in City parks, City of Toronto Municipal Code, c. 608. The applicants did not challenge the validity of the By-law but sought an order to have it suspended …Read more

The applicants appealed a decision affirming the constitutionality of Brian’s Law (Mental Health Legislative Reform), 2000, S.O. 2000, c. 9. (“Brian’s Law”), which was enacted by the Ontario legislature in 2000. Brian’s Law amended the Mental Health Act (“MHA”), adding provisions that expanded criteria for involuntary committal in a psychiatric hospital and introduced community treatment …Read more

The applicants’ claim was based on s. 27(1)(b) of the Constitution – the right to sufficient food and water, which they submitted found further expression in the provisions of the Water Services Act 108 of 1997 (“WSA”). Their complaint argued that farm occupiers and labour tenants, especially the applicants, lacked “access to sufficient water, basic …Read more

The applicant, Mr. Slavko Krajnc, was a professional truck driver in Celje, Slovenia. On September 29, 2003, Krajnc was deemed to have “category III work-related disability” as a result of his epilepsy, which rendered him unable to work as a truck driver. Accordingly, he had the right to be assigned to a different, more suitable …Read more

In 2014, the legislature in Louisiana passed Act 620 which requires any doctor who performs abortions in Louisiana to have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles from where the abortion is performed. Admitting privileges is defined as being “a member in good standing” of the hospital’s “medical staff…with the ability to …Read more

The defendant, Jeremy Rodriguez, was an inmate at FCI Elkton, a federal detention centre in Elkton, Ohio. Rodriguez was serving the seventeenth year of a twenty-one year mandatory minimum sentence for drug distribution and unlawful firearm possession, and was one year away from becoming eligible for home confinement, when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in the …Read more

Plaintiffs Laddy Curtis Valentine (“Valentine”) and Richard Elvin King (“King”) were inmates at Wallace Pack Unit (“Pack Unit”), a geriatric state prison run by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (“TDCJ”) in Grimes County, Texas. On March 30, 2020, plaintiffs filed a complaint, alleging that the defendants, TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier (“Collier”), Pack Unit …Read more

The Petitioners were a group of individuals being held in civil detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at three locations: the York County Prison, the Clinton County Correctional Facility, and the Pike County Correctional facility, while awaiting the final disposition of their immigration cases. With the rapid and expansive spread of the novel coronavirus …Read more

The appellant was charged with four counts of first-degree murder for when he drove to his ex-wife’s grandmother’s house and shot his ex-wife, her grandmother, and his two daughters to death. The murders followed the appellant going through a divorce with the now deceased ex-wife and suffering a job loss which left him distraught. There …Read more

Defendant Governor Dannel Malloy declared a public health emergency in Connecticut in March 2014, in response to an Ebola outbreak in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. This Emergency Declaration authorized Defendant Dr. Mullen, the State Commissioner of Public Health, to quarantine individuals whom she reasonably believed were at risk of …Read more

These are two separate appeals where both appellants challenged the Magistrates’ Court’s decision on the jurisdiction of Drug Treatment Court (DTC) to deal with alcohol addiction and traffic offenses under Section 68 of the Criminal Code Act 1907. They were heard together because they raised the same legal issues. Both appellants suffered from addiction to …Read more

The plaintiff, Kaci Hickox, brought a civil rights action against Governor Christie and state public health officials, alleging that her 80-hour quarantine, upon returning to the United States after caring for Ebola patients in West Africa, violated her rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Prior to the plaintiff’s return to the United States, a …Read more

In 2013, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 2 (H.B. 2), which contained several provisions, which restricted access to abortion. One such requirement was that a doctor must have admitted privileges at a hospital within 30 miles and further every health facility offering abortion services must become mini hospitals as ambulatory surgical centers. A group …Read more

The plaintiffs challenges several sections under the Oklahoma Code stating that it imposed unreasonable restrictions on abortion providers and therefore was in violation of the Oklahoma constitution. Amongst the measure the plaintiffs challenged, one of the sections allowed warrantless searches of abortion clinics. Other sections imposed strict requirements such as preserving tissue in case the …Read more

The petitioners in this case were a group of abortion service providers claiming that two provisions in the House Bill 2 (H.B.2) enacted by the Texas Legislature were unconstitutional as they violated the 14th Amendment. One of the provisions (the admitting privilege provision) stipulated that a physician performing or inducing the abortion had to have …Read more

Peters, the plaintiff, brought a class action against St. Joseph Services Corporation for damages after a data breach of St. Joseph’s computer network. While purchasing health care services, Peters had provided her personally identifiable and protected health information to St. Joseph, including her name, social security number, birthdate, address, medical records, and bank information. In …Read more

CNS International Ministries, Inc. (CNC) and Heartland Christian College (HCC), both nonprofit religious organizations, requested an injunction enjoining the government from enforcing certain provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Both organizations had strong Christian identities and were against abortion, including methods of contraception that they viewed as equivalent to abortion due …Read more

The case concerns the religious exemption and accommodation to the contraceptive mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), which requires health insurance plans to provide coverage for contraception. Plaintiffs were religious organizations who claimed that covering contraception on employee health insurance violated their religious freedom. An exemption from the mandate was available …Read more

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“the Act”) advanced three key reforms to the U.S. health insurance market. First, it instituted insurance market regulations barring insurers from denying coverage or charging higher premiums to any individual based on health status. Second, it enacted a coverage mandate, requiring individuals to have health insurance or pay …Read more

This case challenged rules adopted by the Iowa Board of Medicine (“Board”) regarding medicated abortions provided via telemedicine. Starting in 2008, doctors in Iowa at Planned Parenthood began performing abortions via telemedicine. The abortions were performed using mifepristone, a drug that that can be taken orally that terminates a pregnancy, and misoprostol, another oral drug …Read more

The case concerned an Alaskan regulation that restricted low-income women from accessing medically necessary abortion care under Medicaid, in particular over the definition of “medically necessary” abortions. The Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) had funded such abortions after a 2001ruling from the Supreme Court of Alaska struck down a regulation that restricted state-funded …Read more

The petitioners were same-sex couples from various U.S. states who challenged the constitutionality of bans on same-sex marriage in those states. They claimed that the bans violated the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Due Process Clause protects individuals from the arbitrary denial of life, …Read more

The state of Oklahoma adopted lethal injection as its method of execution for inmates on death row. The injection consisted of a three-drug protocol of (1) sodium thiopental (a barbiturate) to induce unconsciousness, (2) a paralytic agent to inhibit all muscular-skeletal movements, and (3) potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest. The Supreme Court had previously ruled …Read more

The infant Plaintiffs in this case were part of the Surfactant, Positive Pressure, and Oxygenation Randomized Trial (SUPPORT), a clinical research trial aimed at measuring the effects of oxygen saturation levels in premature infants with low birth weights, at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital. For the trial, participants were randomly assigned into groups, and the …Read more

This case involved the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the Act) that had adopted three major health insurance reforms. In particular the Act adopted the ‘guaranteed issue’ requirement that prevented insurers from denying insurance coverage for an individual due to his state of health; the ‘community rating’ requirement that required insurers from imposing higher …Read more

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts amended its Reproductive Health Care Facilities Act (the “Act”), making it a crime to knowingly stand on a “public way or sidewalk” within 35 feet of an entrance or driveway to any abortion clinic. The Act exempted from this prohibition certain individuals, including “employees or agents of such facility acting within the scope …Read more

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) imposed an obligation on certain employers to provide “‘preventive care and screenings’ for women without ‘any cost sharing requirements.’” Under that law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) imposed a regulation that the preventive care includes 20 types of contraceptives. Four of those …Read more

Rhoades was diagnosed with HIV in 1998 and began receiving treatment for the disease from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics every three to six months beginning in 2005. In 2008, Rhoades was informed that his viral load was non-detectible. Later that year, he met A.P. on a social networking cite that listed Rhoades …Read more

The petitioner and his accomplice kidnapped, beat, raped, and murdered a pregnant woman before driving to a convenience store, which they planned to rob. In the parking lot of the store, they killed a sheriff’s deputy who attempted to apprehend them. The petitioner received the death penalty for both murders. He argued that he could …Read more

The United States Leadership against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 (Leadership Act), 22 U.S.C. §7601 set forth a strategy to globally combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. Congress authorized the appropriation of billions of dollars to fund efforts by nongovernmental organizations working in this area. The Leadership Act’s conditions stated that: (1) No funds …Read more

After significant political struggles, the US Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010. This act had two components, 1) it obligated individuals to maintain “‘minimum essential’ health insurance coverage” through an individual mandate, 2) it contained an expansion of the federal Medicaid program that is run by US states. The constitutionality …Read more

This case had started in a suit brought before the Federal District Court by twenty-six States, several individuals, and the National Federation of Independent Business against the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (the Secretary) questioning the constitutionality of two provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the Act) of …Read more

This case involved a challenge to background checks for government jobs on the basis of constitutional privacy.  Nelson and twenty-seven other federal contract employees, working for NASA at a government laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, claimed that two elements of a standard employment background investigation violated their constitutional rights:  a questionnaire that asked …Read more

This case involved an appeal from a decision made by a three-judge court that was convened by the Federal District Court to decide the appropriate remedy for violations of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The violations were the subject of two related Federal District Court cases in California: Coleman v. Brown (1990) …Read more