U.S. Supreme Court

Context Matters: Affirmative Action, Public Health, and the Use of Population-Level Data

By Wendy E. Parmet, Elaine Marshall & Alisa K. Lincoln

Last June, in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the Supreme Court ruled that universities could not consider race in admitting students. In support of that decision, the Court dismissed the relevance of data about the varied experiences of racial groups, insisting that admissions decisions must be based solely on the experiences and merits of individual applicants. The Court’s rejection of group-level data evinces a critical misunderstanding about the uses and limits of such data that, if applied more broadly, portends troubling implications for health equity and health policy.

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Decrease in the patient’s chances to survive held actionable as a standalone damage in Minnesota

By Alex Stein

On May 31, 2013, the Supreme Court of Minnesota has delivered an immensely important decision: it recognized as actionable a patient’s increased risk of dying resulting from her doctor’s negligent failure to secure timely diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Dickhoff v. Green, — N.W.2d —, 2013 WL 2363550 (Minn. 2013)

This case involved a family physician (the defendant) and her baby patient (the plaintiff). The baby had a lump on her buttock, which the defendant allegedly considered a non-issue for nearly a year. At the 1–year well-baby check, the defendant referred the baby to a specialist, who diagnosed her with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma (ARS)—a rare and aggressive childhood cancer. The baby subsequently underwent a tumor-removal surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but remained dangerously ill. Read More