Fact Sheet

Trends in Legal Challenges to Anti-Transgender Youth Sports Bans

Fact SheetMechanisms for Advancing Health EquityMental Health and Well-BeingHealth in School

March 7, 2024

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.

View page

­What Does Judicial Deference Have to Do with Public Health Authority?

Fact SheetPublic Health AuthorityEmergency Legal Preparedness and Response

February 21, 2024
by Darlene Huang Briggs

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.

View page

­Public Health Authority in Maryland

Fact SheetPublic Health AuthorityMaryland

February 20, 2024
by Brooke Torton

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.

View page

­Texting to Promote Public Health: What Health Departments Should Know About the Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Fact SheetHealth Information and Data SharingEmergency ResponseMechanisms for Advancing Public HealthMechanisms for Advancing Health Equity

February 20, 2024
by Emma Kaeser

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.

View page

State Policies to Protect Access to Medical Cannabis Following Adult-Use Legalization

Fact SheetCannabis Legalization and Regulation

February 1, 2024
by Mathew Swinburne

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.

View page

­Improving Local Public Health Access to Public Health Data: Illinois Out in Front

Fact SheetHealth Information and Data Sharing

January 25, 2024
by Stephen Murphy

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.

View page

­United We Stand: How Some States Are Protecting Access to Gender Affirming Care and Abortion in a Single Legislative Act

Fact SheetReproductive Health and Equity 

January 4, 2024
by Stephen Murphy

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.

View page

Medicaid Reimbursement for School Nursing Services

Fact SheetSchool NursesSchool NursingMaternal and Child HealthHealth in School

November 16, 2023
by Kerri McGowan Lowrey

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.

View page

­Attempts to Restrict Ballot Initiatives That Protect Abortion Access

Fact SheetReproductive Health and Equity 

October 5, 2023
by Joanna S. Suder

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.

View page

­The CDC Transportation Mask Mandate and Mootness: A Q&A Explanation of Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden

Fact SheetPublic Health AuthorityCOVID-19Legislation and Legal Challenges

September 18, 2023
by Colleen Healy Boufides

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.

View page

Prison Procurement Laws in the Southeast

Fact SheetMechanisms for Advancing Health Equity

June 1, 2023
by Dawn Hunter

Incarcerated workers across the U.S. provide valuable goods and services, producing items used in state and local government agencies and engaging in work like road repair, firefighting, and post-disaster clean-up. They generate more than $2 billion a year in goods and $9 billion a year in services, but are not covered by typical workplace protections, like minimum wage and workplace safety laws. It is important for states to strike a balance between the requirements for prison labor and protecting the health and well-being of incarcerated people. This Fact Sheet summarizes prison procurement laws in states in the Network’s Southeastern Region, prompted by a question from the state of Virginia.

View page