The U.S. House of Representatives appropriations committee approved the Fiscal Year 2021 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS) appropriations bill. The bill includes $196.5 billion in funding for federal programs that support access affordable health care, education, employment, and more.

The bill would increase funding for HIV/AIDS research, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, and the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative compared with last year. It also includes funding to help rebuild the U.S.’s crumbling health infrastructure and over $24 billion in emergency funding to address spiking unemployment claims and public health needs.

The House bill includes the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use federal funds to pay for abortion care except in limited circumstances. The Hyde Amendment has created significant barriers to abortion access for people with low incomes, particularly Black and Latinx women. It’s a racist policy that tends to perpetuate existing health care inequities.

Congresswomen Pressley (MA-07), Lee (CA-13), Schakowsky (IL-09), and Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) introduced a bill to strip Hyde from the Labor-HHS appropriations bill.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discreetly ordered hospitals to send COVID-19 related data to TeleTracking Technologies, a federal contractor and private technology firm in Pittsburgh. The new data reporting protocol eliminates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a recipient of hospital’s COVID-19 information, further alienating the expert agency from the nation’s COVID-19 response.

Public health experts have raised concerns that that changes could undermine data protections, transparency and quality, and continue the politicization the pandemic. HHS will reportedly use the data to guide the distribution of remdesivir – currently the only approved treatment for COVID-19 patients – and limited personal protective equipment.

14 percent of Oklahoma residents are uninsured, the second-highest rate in the nation next to Texas. Medicaid expansion is expected to sharply reduce that rate by making at least 200,000 people newly eligible for coverage.  

The ballot measure passed after Governor Kevin Stitt submitted a plan to undermine expansion by shifting to a block grant structure, adding work requirements, premiums, and other harmful changes. It will, however, now be more difficult for Stitt and conservative lawmakers to enact such policies because the ballot measure embeds Medicaid expansion in the state’s constitution.

According to the ballot measure, Oklahoma must to expand its Medicaid program by July 1, 2021.

Sexual & Reproductive Health, Rights, & Justice

In a landmark case, June Medical Services v. Russo, the Supreme Court struck down yet another attempt to limit abortion access. This is a victory for abortion rights, but a narrow one.

In June, the Court barred Louisiana from enacting a law that would have prevented doctors from providing abortion unless they had “admitting privileges,” i.e., the right to admit patients at a local hospital. Admitting privileges make it harder for clinics to stay open and provide no health or safety benefit to the patient. Indeed, the Supreme Court found an identical law in Texas unconstitutional in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt just four years ago.

In order to win at the Supreme Court, you need five votes. Four justices voted to uphold the reasoning of Whole Woman’s Health and strike down the Louisiana admitting privileges law. The fifth vote came from Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts made clear that he only struck down the Louisiana law because it was so similar to the Texas law in Whole Woman’s Health. He was begrudgingly following precedent, not endorsing the constitutional right to access abortion.

Roberts’ opinion offers anti-abortion advocates a template for a more successful challenge in the future: give him a different set of facts, a different legal argument, and he’d be open to decimating the right to access abortion.

The Supreme Court upholds “anti-prostitution pledge” for foreign affiliates of U.S. organizations

The Supreme Court hurt the fight to end the global HIV epidemic by upholding a dangerous, stigmatizing U.S. policy. In USAID v. Alliance for Open Society International, the Court decided to allow the requirement that foreign affiliates of domestic organizations sign a pledge opposing sex work – the so-called “anti-prostitution pledge” – in order to receive funding through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  

In 2013, the Court held that the government cannot compel domestic organizations to sign the “anti-prostitution pledge.” This case means the same First Amendment protections do not apply to their foreign affiliates.  

The “anti-prostitution pledge” gets in the way of reaching sex workers for HIV education, prevention, testing, and treatment. Criminalization and stigmatization create heightened risk of violence and abuse for sex workers, and consequently make them more vulnerable to acquiring HIV. It also impedes access to care: If an organization denounces sex work, sex workers are far less likely to turn to that organization for support or services.

This rule is harmful to public health efforts in general, and specifically in the context of COVID-19, will prevent organizations from providing support and services to sex workers already facing financial devastation. 

Supreme Court allows Trump administration to limit birth control coverage

The Supreme Court upheld two Trump administration regulations that threaten access to contraception for tens of thousands of people. The case, Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, involved sweeping regulations that would let employers deny their employees contraceptive coverage based on religious or moral objections.  

The regulations create gaping exemptions from the ACA’s contraceptive mandate – the requirement that most health plans cover contraception without out-of-pocket costs. The Supreme Court held that the government did have the authority to adopt the broad exemptions and that they did not violate the law when doing so.  

The regulations will now go into effect, immediately endangering birth control coverage for an estimated 70,500 to 126,400 people. The holdings in Little Sisters of the Poor left many outstanding questions, and attorneys general in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have vowed to continues challenging the regulations in court.

Federal courts in Georgia and Tennessee block extreme abortion bans

Federal courts have consistently rejected near-total abortion bans, misleadingly called “heartbeat bills,” as an unconstitutional infringement on the right to access abortion care. Georgia and Tennessee now join Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Dakota in blocking such laws from going into effect.

Georgia’s HB 481 and Tennessee’s HB 2263 would have banned abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, well before many people know they’re pregnant. Abortion restrictions are misogynist and racist. They disproportionately impact Black women and can create insurmountable barriers to accessing to abortion care, especially when coupled with longstanding structural inequities that leave Black women more likely to experience economic insecurity. Georgia Governor Kemp has already announced his intent to appeal the decision.

Economic Justice

Trump issues memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census

On July 21, Trump issued a memorandum to the Commerce Department, which oversees the census, outlining his intent to exclude undocumented immigrants from the final numbers used to apportion the House of Representatives. In accordance with the U.S. Constitution, every ten years the population totals from the census are used to calculate the number of House seats given to each state.

One problem with Trump’s order is that it is flagrantly unconstitutional: The Constitution requires congressional representation be based on “the whole Number of free Persons,” not the number of American citizens.

It is a part of Trump’s larger anti-immigrant, white supremacist agenda. By discounting non-citizens, the policy would likely result in significant malapportionment, under-representing areas with larger immigrant populations and over-representing areas with larger white populations. The ACLU has announced its intent to challenge the order in court.

Ending Criminalization

The BREATHE Act introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)’s Electoral Justice Project unveiled a visionary bill that would divest taxpayer dollars from policing and invest in genuine community care and social safety.  

The BREATHE Act has four main sections: 1) divest from incarceration and policing to end the harms of the criminal-legal system; 2) use federal funding to incentivize and invest in new approaches to community safety, 3) allocate money for healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities; and 4) hold public official accountable while enhancing self-determination of Black communities. Find more policy demands here.  

The BREATHE Act has yet to be introduced in Congress, but Representatives Ayanna Pressley (MA-7) and Rashida Tlaib (MI-13) are already champions of the bill. Sign up to be a community co-sponsor of the BREATHE Act here.  

Supreme Court allows Florida to enforce a law limiting voting rights for people convicted of felonies

In Raysor v. DeSantis, the Supreme Court has refused to intervene in an ongoing dispute over the single largest expansion of voting rights in decades. Back in 2018, Florida voters approved by 65% a ballot initiative restoring voting rights to people who have completed their sentences for most felony offenses – otherwise known as  Amendment 4.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis then signed a law that effectively gutted the Amendment by requiring people to repay all court-ordered fines and fees before registering to vote. 

By refusing to intervene in this case, the Supreme Court is allowing the state to block thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in the upcoming elections simply because cannot pay off their fines and fees.  

Election Updates

Supreme Court rules that states can constitutionally bind Electoral College voters

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld laws that remove or punish “faithless electors” in Colorado Department of State v. Baca. “Faithless electors” are members of the electoral college who vote for someone other than their pledged candidate.  

This ruling means states can require members of the electoral college to vote for the winner of the state’s popular vote, and can punish them if they fail to do so. Thirty-two states and Washington, D.C. have some sort of faithless elector law. Find more about your state here.

The issue gained prominence in 2016 because it was the first time a state actually punished or removed a presidential elector for refusing to vote for their pledged candidate.

The electoral college has racist, anti-democratic foundations and continues to dilute the power of Black voters. Learn more about the National Popular Vote bill, which would guarantee the presidency to the candidate with the most popular votes here.

Other Updates

• Maryland federal court eases access to medication abortion as demand for at-home abortion skyrockets during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Court blocks Trump administration rule designed to make insurance companies stop offering abortion coverage.

• The Supreme Court rules states cannot ban public funding for religious schools.

• Federal court blocked rule that would bar most Central American migrants from requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Trump administration rescinds plan to strip international college students of their visas.

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