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| Agency overview | |
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| Formed | May 31, 1989 |
| Jurisdiction | State of Washington |
| Agency executive |
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| Website | doh |
The Washington State Department of Health is a state agency of Washington. It is headquartered in Olympia, Washington. [1] The agency was created by the state legislature in May 1989 after splitting from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. [2]
States have historically provided a conscience clause right allowing pharmacists to refrain from participating in abortions. In June 2006, the Pharmacy Board of the Washington State Department of Health rejected a draft rule proposed by Governor Christine Gregoire to require all pharmacies to begin carrying Plan B levonorgestrel. [3] Governor Gregoire responded by releasing a public statement warning the Board members to reconsider or they could be removed. [3] In July 2006, the Washington State Human Rights Commission warned the Board members that they would be personally liable for illegally discriminating against women if they did not pass the Governor's Plan B rule. [3] In April 2007, the Board approved a final rule prohibiting pharmacies from not stocking Plan B for religious reasons but allowing exemptions for "good faith" business reasons. [3]
When Ralph's Thriftway, a grocery store in Olympia, refused for religious reasons to carry Plan B, it was widely boycotted, leading Gregoire to cancel the grocer's longstanding account with the Washington Governor's Mansion. [3] The only complaints for violating the Plan B rule were filed against the grocer. [3] The grocer sued but, instead of alleging violations of the broader Constitution of Washington, its attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty only filed under the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution. [4]
On November 8, 2007, U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton granted the grocer a preliminary injunction blocking the rule. [5] [3] On May 1, 2008, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Judges Thomas G. Nelson and Jay Bybee denied the state a stay of the injunction pending appeal, over a dissent by Judge A. Wallace Tashima. [6] [3] However, on July 8, 2009, Circuit Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, joined by Richard Clifton and N. Randy Smith reversed the preliminary injunction. [7] [4]
On February 22, 2012, after four years of discovery and a twelve-day bench trial, Judge Leighton issued a permanent injunction blocking the Plan B rule as unconstitutional. [8] On July 23, 2015, Circuit Judge Susan P. Graber, joined by Judges Mary H. Murguia and Richard Clifton reversed. [9] [10] The grocer's petition for certiorari from the Supreme Court of the United States was denied on June 28, 2016. [11] [12] Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented, writing that "the rules challenged here reflect antipathy towards religious beliefs that do not accord with the views of those holding the levers of government power." [13] [14]
In Harris v. Quinn (2014) the Supreme Court of the United States gave home healthcare workers the right to not join their union. [15] The Freedom Foundation reacted by filing a Public Record Act request for a list of home healthcare workers from the Department so it could encourage the workers to leave the union. [15] The Department refused, then encouraged the Service Employees International Union to sue the Department to prevent the disclosure. [15]
The SEIU lost its lawsuit in the superior, appeals, and Washington Supreme Court. [16] The SEIU responded by putting Washington Initiative 1501 on the Washington elections, 2016 ballot, which would change the Public Record Act to forbid departments from disclosing union members' names. [16] The ballot initiative was approved with 70% of the vote. [17]
From January 27, 2018 "gender X" will be legally available by regulations from existing Washington State Department of Health records only, to amend birth certificates. [18]
In early March 2020, coronavirus cases within Washington state grew along with the rest of the country. Washington State Department of Health officials requested, from the federal government's Strategic National Stockpile (the U.S. government's repository of drugs, vaccines and equipment to be used in major public health emergencies), 233,000 respirators and 200,000 surgical masks. The initial federal response was disappointing. The SNS could provide only 93,600 N95 respirators and 100,200 surgical masks. After public criticism, the federal government announced it would deliver all of the requested items to Washington state. [19]
In United States federal law, the Daubert standard is a rule of evidence regarding the admissibility of expert witness testimony. A party may raise a Daubert motion, a special motion in limine raised before or during trial, to exclude the presentation of unqualified evidence to the jury. The Daubert trilogy are the three United States Supreme Court cases that articulated the Daubert standard:
Conscience clauses are legal clauses attached to laws in some parts of the United States and other countries which permit pharmacists, physicians, and/or other providers of health care not to provide certain medical services for reasons of religion or conscience. It can also involve parents withholding consenting for particular treatments for their children.
Dennis Jacobs is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Scott Milne Matheson Jr. is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He has served on that court since 2010.
Loretta A. Preska is an American lawyer who serves as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Born in Albany, Preska received law degrees from Fordham University School of Law and New York University School of Law. She practiced law in New York City from 1973 to 1992 at the law firms of Cahill Gordon & Reindel and Hertzog, Calamari & Gleason. President George H. W. Bush appointed her to the district bench in 1992. She served as chief judge of the court for a seven-year term from 2009 to 2016, and took senior status in 2017. President George W. Bush nominated Preska to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2008, but the Senate did not act on the nomination.
Jerry Edwin Smith is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Wilfred Feinberg was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and previously was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Reed Charles O'Connor is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2007.
John Garvan Murtha is an inactive Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Vermont.
James Louis Robart is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Salazar v. Buono, 559 U.S. 700 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case concerned the legality of the Mojave Memorial Cross, a Latin cross which was placed atop a prominent rock outcropping by the Veterans of Foreign Wars foundation in 1934 to honor war dead. The location is known as "Sunrise Rock" in the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County in southeastern California. The Supreme Court ruled that the cross may stay, but also sent the case back to a lower court, making the issue currently unresolved.
Miranda Mai Du is an American lawyer who has served as a United States district judge. Du was nominated by President Barack Obama to the United States District Court for the District of Nevada in 2011, and confirmed by the Senate in 2012. As a district judge, Du has presided over a number of noteworthy cases, including a number regarding voting rights. She has been chief judge of the court since 2019.
Barclays Capital Inc. v. Theflyonthewall.com, Inc., 650 F.3d 876, was a case decided in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit where the Second Circuit, reversing the decision of the US District Court below it, found that the claims of three major financial investment firms against an internet subscription stock news service (theflyonthewall.com) for "Hot-news" Misappropriation under state common law doctrine could not stand, as they were pre-empted by several sections of the Federal Copyright Act.
Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, 579 U.S. 582 (2016), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court announced on June 27, 2016. The Court ruled 5–3 that Texas cannot place restrictions on the delivery of abortion services that create an undue burden for women seeking an abortion. On June 28, 2016, the Supreme Court refused to hear challenges from Wisconsin and Mississippi where federal appeals courts had enjoined the enforcement of similar laws.
Jihad Ahmed Mustafa Dhiab also known as Abu Wa'el Dhiab was born in Lebanon on July 10, 1971. He was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba until he was released to Uruguay. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 722. Dhiab was one of the Guantanamo hunger strikers.
Wolf v. Vidal, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a case that was filed to challenge the Trump Administration's rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Plaintiffs in the case are DACA recipients who argue that the rescission decision is unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment. On February 13, 2018, Judge Garaufis in the Eastern District of New York addressed the question of whether the government offered a legally adequate reason for ending the DACA program. The court found that Defendants did not provide a legally adequate reason for ending the DACA program and that the decision to end DACA was arbitrary and capricious. Defendants have appealed the decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., No. 18-483, 587 U.S. ___, 139 S.Ct. 1780 (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the constitutionality of a 2016 anti-abortion law passed in the state of Indiana. Indiana's law sought to ban abortions performed solely on the basis of the fetus' gender, race, ethnicity, or disabilities. Lower courts had blocked enforcement of the law for violating a woman's right to abortion under privacy concerns within the Fourteenth Amendment, as previously found in the landmark cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The lower courts also blocked enforcement of another portion of the law that required the disposal of aborted fetuses through burial or cremation. The per curiam decision by the Supreme Court overturned the injunction on the fetal disposal portion of the law, but otherwise did not challenge or confirm the lower courts' ruling on the non-discrimination clauses, leaving these in place.
In United States law, a nationwide injunction is injunctive relief in which a court binds the federal government even in its relations with nonparties. In their prototypical form, nationwide injunctions are used to restrict the federal government from enforcing a statute or regulation.
Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the ability of schools to regulate student speech made off-campus, including speech made on social media. The case challenged past interpretations of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District and Bethel School District v. Fraser in light of online communications.
Biden v. Texas, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case related to administrative law and immigration.
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