Can Workers Tell Governors to Drop Dead? The Moral Authority to Defy Lockdowns

JOSEPH MARGULIES

In this second of a series of columns about the COVID-19 protests, Cornell law professor Joseph Margulies argues, with some caveats, that workers have the moral authority to reopen their businesses in order to sustain themselves. Margulies notes that while he is not advising anyone to disobey the law (and while he personally supports the lockdown orders), business owners facing the impossible decision whether to follow the law or sustain themselves and their families are morally justified in defying the stay-at-home orders.

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Paid Labor: Eleventh Circuit Protects Rights of Pregnant Worker

JOANNA L. GROSSMAN, CYNTHIA THOMAS CALVERT

Joanna L. Grossman, law professor SMU Dedman School of Law, and Cynthia Thomas Calvert, principal of Workforce 21C and a senior advisor for family responsibilities discrimination to the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings, comment on a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals by the Eleventh Circuit protecting the rights of a pregnant worker. Grossman and Calvert describe the lower court’s ruling and the appellate court’s decision reversing it, calling the decision “a step forward for the rights of pregnant women.”

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Lozano v. Secretary of Health and Human Services

Docket: 19-2138

Opinion Date: May 18, 2020

Judge: O'Malley

Areas of Law: Government & Administrative Law, Personal Injury, Public Benefits

In 2012, Lozano gave birth to a baby. While still hospitalized, Lozano received a tetanus-diphtheria-acellular-pertussis (Tdap) vaccination. Two weeks later, Lozano reported a low-grade fever, body aches, and breast tenderness. Lozano’s symptoms persisted through visits to her physician and the emergency room. She developed abdominal pain, difficulty urinating, weakness, loss of balance, vision changes, neck pain, headache, vomiting, and dizziness. A brain MRI suggested that Lozano possibly had multiple sclerosis (MS), acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), or vasculitis. Lozano’s symptoms improved with steroid treatment, following a working diagnosis of MS. After several months, a repeat MRI “showed dramatic improvement, suggesting that ADEM was a more likely etiology, which was confirmed through later serological findings.” Lozano’s doctors opine that ADEM is the likely explanation for her symptoms. Lozano sought compensation under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, 42 U.S.C. 300aa. Lozano’s expert opined that Lozano’s ADEM was the result of her receipt of the Tdap vaccine. The special master granted Lozano’s petition, finding that her expert’s testimony and the supporting medical literature demonstrated that the Tdap vaccine can cause autoimmune diseases such as ADEM and that Lozano offered preponderant evidence of a proximate temporal relationship between the vaccine and her injury. The Claims Court and Federal Circuit upheld the award of a lump-sum payment of $1,199,216.86, finding that the decision was neither an abuse of discretion nor contrary to law and that the fact-findings were neither arbitrary nor capricious.