Source: https://www.cityprojectca.org/health-justice
Timestamp: 2019-09-19 12:36:34
Document Index: 224714782

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2000', '§ 42', '§ 1557', '§ 18116', '§ 4001', '§ 1', '§ 11135', '§ 98101']

HEALTH JUSTICE - The City Project
Fair Housing Is a Bedrock Civil Rights Protection: The Supreme Court Must Preserve the Discriminatory Impact Standard
How to improve health outcomes for all using civil rights laws FAQs
Quality Education and Physical Education
Economic Vitality, Meaningful Work, and Displacement
Health and Equality Blog
We celebrate the broad base and reach of the Movement. The Civil Rights Revolution includes attorneys taking cases to court, ground breaking judicial decisions, grass roots organizing, legislation by Congress, action by the President, implementation by administrative agencies, and people providing a mandate to support civil rights through the right to vote. The election of President Barack Obama was a major milestone in 2008. 2014 marked the 60th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education and Hernandez v Texas, the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, the 20th anniversary of the President’s Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice and health, and recent victories and challenges. Celebrate The Civil Rights Revolution: The Struggle Continues.
1. What’s the problem? Ethnic and racial health inequities remain persistent and pervasive. Civil rights protections are part of the solution. There are many avenues to improve health outcomes for all through compliance with civil rights laws. These laws guarantee equal access to public resources and require recipients of federal funding and others to comply with nondiscrimination requirements based on race, color, or national origin. From a health perspective, civil rights laws offer important and underutilized tools to support health-based recommendations. From a civil rights perspective, the health lens offers a powerful way to improve compliance and protect civil rights. Voluntary compliance is the preferred means to achieve the goals of civil rights laws including health equity. Planning, funding, and administrative processes offer opportunities for public agencies and other stakeholders to improve the health and lives of people of color and low-income people without litigation. Access to justice through the courts is also an option when voluntary compliance fails. Government agencies, recipients of federal and state funds, and foundations should incorporate compliance with civil rights laws into programs and activities where there is evidence of health disparities.1
Physical education is a necessity, and a right
2. Why are civil rights protections necessary to protect health and life itself? The documented costs of health inequalities are great. Between 2003 and 2006, for example:
Eliminating health inequalities for people of color would have reduced indirect costs associated with illness and premature death by more than one trillion dollars.2
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, according to the World Health Organization. The social determinants of health include where we live, learn, work, play, pray, and age. Civil rights laws can go beyond health in all policies to achieve health equity in all policies.
3. Why does race and ethnicity matter? Discrimination based on race, color, or national origin is a root cause of health inequities, and a comprehensive strategy to eliminate these inequities must incorporate a strong civil rights component by government agencies and recipients of federal and state funds, as discussed in the Institute of Medicine’s book Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare (2003).
Obesity and diabetes disproportionately impact Latinos and Blacks
4. How do we improve health outcomes for people of color and low income people? Stakeholders should work together on compliance and equity planning for health programs and activities by recipients of federal or state funding and others. The plan should (a) describe what is to be done, (b) analyze the impact on all communities including the impact based on race, color, or national origin, (c) analyze alternatives, (d) include full and fair participation by diverse communities, and (e) include an implementation plan to alleviate health inequities and to distribute benefits and burdens fairly.
5. What is discrimination? Compliance and equity plans should guard against unjustified and unnecessary discriminatory impacts, as well as intentional discrimination. The discriminatory impact standard can ferret out subtle and structural practices that have demonstrably discriminatory health effects. A thoughtless policy can be as unfair as, and functionally equivalent to, intentional discrimination. As a matter of common sense, discriminatory programs or activities should be avoided in favor of those that serve everyone’s interests fairly, effectively, and without discrimination.
6. What can public agencies do? Federal funding agencies should ensure compliance with civil rights laws through the many avenues they have available. This includes data collection, analyses, and publication; planning; rules, regulations, and guidance documents; review of funding applications; contractual assurances of compliance by recipients; compulsory self-evaluations by recipients; compliance reviews after funding; investigation of administrative complaints; full and fair public participation in the compliance and enforcement process; and denial or termination of funding. The United States Department of Justice can enforce civil rights requirements in court. State and local agencies should use similar tools to ensure compliance with federal and parallel state laws.
7. How can health impact assessments help? Health impact assessments (HIA) offer a promising way to factor health considerations into the decision-making process. HIA is a systematic process that uses an array of data sources and analytic methods and considers input from stakeholders to determine the potential effects of a proposed program or activity on health, and the distribution of those effects. HIA provides recommendations on monitoring and managing to minimize adverse health impacts, and optimize beneficial ones. Recognizing and addressing the effects of a proposal on health equity (or health disparities) has been seen as a core task of HIA, although HIA practice has sometimes been criticized for a lack of attention to health equity, according to the National Research Council. HIAs used with civil rights laws offer dual benefits to alleviate health inequities through compliance, planning, administrative, and judicial processes.
8. How can attorneys and public health experts work together? Attorneys and public health experts should work together to promote better understanding of the civil rights dimension of the challenge of health inequities, and to alleviate these inequities. Public health research too often stop at documenting health inequities, without addressing what to do about it.
9. What can attorneys do? Attorneys should rely on civil rights laws as part of a comprehensive problem-solving strategy to address health inequities. This includes planning, data collection and analysis, media, negotiation, policy and legal advocacy out of court, coalition building, and, when necessary, access to justice through the courts.
10. What can foundations do? Foundations should incorporate compliance with civil rights laws into their programs and activities, including grant making, where there is evidence of health disparities. Foundations should support racial justice lawyers to use comprehensive problem-solving strategies to address health inequities. Funding for organizational capacity can strengthen philanthropic efforts across a range of programs. Strategic funding of national, regional and local groups can have a significant impact to improve health outcomes.
11. What civil rights laws apply here? The following civil rights laws, among others, address health inequities. The Affordable Care Act‘s section 1557 reflects a renewed commitment by Congress to combat health discrimination by any health program or activity that receives federal funding, or is administered by a federal executive agency. The Act also includes over 60 provisions to improve wellness and prevention. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its regulations require recipients of federal funding to comply with nondiscrimination requirements based on race, color, or national origin. President John F. Kennedy in his message to Congress about Title VI said, “Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination.” Senator Hubert Humphrey, the floor leader for the Civil Rights Act, argued we “do not have to be lawyers to understand, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’” The President’s Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice and health requires each federal agency to identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations. Environmental justice is the environmental arm of the Civil Rights Movement. California law provides similar protections against discrimination.3 Civil rights laws against discrimination should be strengthened and not rolled back. This includes the prohibition against unjustified and unnecessary discriminatory impacts and intentional discrimination.
Signing Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice and health, 1994
12. What does the Civil Rights Movement have to do with health justice? It takes a movement. The myriad strategies of the Civil Rights Movement started the process of dismantling health discrimination. A similar health justice movement, drawing on history, is needed to seek racial equity and overcome discrimination and structural barriers to a more equitable society. The Civil Rights Revolution includes attorneys taking cases to court, judicial decisions, grass roots organizing, legislation by Congress, action by the President, implementation by administrative agencies, and We the People exercising the right to vote.
Thus, civil rights attorneys successfully challenged “separate and unequal” schools for African American and Latino children through the courts. The NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, Inc., and League of United Latin American Citizens led this struggle for equal protection through the courts in the decades before and after Brown. The United States Supreme Court abolished the separate but equal doctrine in Brown v Board of Education under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution in 1954. The Court held in Hernandez v Texas that equal protection applies based on race, color, national origin, ancestry, and descent, also in 1954. Civil Rights are not a black and white issue. The Civil Rights Movement in the streets, organized by Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and others, culminated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and the passage of landmark civil rights legislation. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. President Lyndon Johnson pushed the 1964 Act through Congress through brilliant parliamentary maneuvering, and arm twisting. The 1964 election provided a mandate by the people to support the Civil Rights Revolution.
Members of NAACP LDF team in Brown v Board
The combined strategies of the Civil Rights Movement have been necessary to seek equal justice in and out of court. For example, ten years after Brown, schools in the South had taken virtually no steps to desegregate. The federal government began using Title VI combined with federal funding for schools to ensure nondiscrimination in 1964. As a result, southern schools became the most integrated in the nation by 1972. Similarly, the federal Hill Burton Act of 1944 provided more than $100 million per year in direct aid to states for discriminatory health services and facilities. A federal court of appeals struck down the “separate but equal” provision in 1963 in Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, applying the logic of Brown. The federal government then used Title VI combined with Medicare funding to prevent health discrimination. As a result, health outcomes improved for both blacks and whites in the South.4
The Civil Rights struggle continues for equal justice, democracy, and human dignity.
13. What can you do? Donate to The City Project to support health justice for all.
Smithsonian Anacostia Museum Reclaiming the Edge: Urban Waters and Civic Engagement
1. See, for example, Robert García, The George Butler Lecture: Social Justice and Leisure, 45(1) Journal of Leisure Research 7-22 (Winter 2013), goo.gl/dg2QY; The City Project et. al, Public Comments on Health and Environmental Justice along the Los Angeles River (Nov. 18, 2013), www.cityprojectca.org/blog/archives/23454; Health Justice, www.cityprojectca.org/health-justice; Michael Rodriguez, Daphne Hsu, Marc Brenman, Marianne Engelman Lado, Robert García, Civil Right and Health Inequities (forthcoming 2014).
2. Thomas A. LaVeist, et al., Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, The Economic Burden of Health Inequalities, at 1 (Sept. 2009).
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d; 28 C.F.R. § 42.101 et seq. (U.S. Dept. of Justice regulations); 45 C.F.R. 80 (Health and Human Services regulations).
Affordable Care Act, § 1557, 42 U.S.C. § 18116; see also §§ 4001, 4201, 4306.
Executive Order 12898, § 1-101 (Feb. 11, 1994).
Ca. Govt. Code § 11135; 22 CCR § 98101; Ca. Govt. Code 65040.12(e).
3. A new wave of studies on the Civil Rights Movement is emerging during the 60th anniversary of Brown and the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. See, for example, Gavin Wright, Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (2013); Bruce Ackerman, The Civil Rights Revolution (2014); Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power (2012); Clay Risen, The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act (2014); Todd S. Purdum, An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (2014). Leading earlier works include, for example, Jack Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution (1994); Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (1975 and 2004); D. B. Smith, Health Care Divided: Race and Healing a Nation (1999); J. Dittmer, The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care (2009); ; Taylor Branch, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement (2013).