AUWCL Experts Share Insights During COVID and the Law Webinar
Sept. 9, 2020
On Tuesday, Sept. 8, American University Washington College of Law held a webinar on the legal lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how federal law can be used to address future public health crises.
“COVID and the Law: Lessons Learned” was presented by AUWCL’s Program on Law and Government and Health Law and Policy Program. The pandemic has not only impacted our health, but “our economy, our politics, and our culture,” said panel moderator Fernando Laguarda, faculty director of the Program on Law and Government.
The discussion included several distinguished panelists, including Health Law and Policy Program Director and Professor Lindsay F. Wiley and Professor Lewis Grossman. Also joining the conversation were University of Baltimore Law Professor Kim Wehle and Gigi Sohn, distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy.
Wiley said the most pressing legal issues from the public health standpoint have been the disputes over who holds the reins on social distancing and who is responsible for providing the financial support and supply chain coordination needed to implement a modern response, which is dependent on testing.
“In this crisis we have continued to fail to provide widespread, easy access to accurate testing required to implement a more targeted response,” Wiley said. “So we’ve essentially been telling people everyone needs to behave as if we could be silent carriers of infections, potentially posing a risk to others, at all times for a year, year and a half. And that’s presented enormous conflicts over individual rights and economic interests – in addition to the conflicts over who has authority to order business restrictions, to order face covering mandates – so we’re seeing hundreds of lawsuits.”
Grossman, who specializes in the areas of food and drug law and health law, said the FDA is truly at the center of the intersection between the pandemic and the law, because it regulates not only food, drugs, and cosmetics, but also biologics, including vaccines and blood products, and medical devices, including diagnostic tests.
“The politicization of FDA decision making as we head toward the election threatens not only the agency’s longstanding reputation for integrity but also the public’s faith in the safety and effectiveness of any vaccine the agency approves,” Grossman said.
Wehle, who served as a visiting professor during spring 2020, said while the president’s claims he can postpone the election are not accurate, the virus is presenting many election challenges.
“We’re in a moment right now where the laws are changing constantly because of COVID,” Wehle said. “We’re seeing lawsuits primarily from the Republican side of the aisle challenging COVID-related changes to state-by-state voting, and people don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s hard to get accurate information out. Every individual person needs to have a vote plan that is shifting, and needs to be on top of the laws in their own state that are changing.”