Arbitration: Supreme Court Dismisses cert grant as "improvidently granted"

The default rule is that the question f arbitrability- whether a case is within the arbitrator's power - is to be decided by a court and not an arbitrator: unless there is agreement to the contrary.

In Henry Schein,Inc. v. Archer and White Sales the issue was whether a reference to the American Arbitration Association (AAA) rules was sufficient to give the arbitrator authority.  The stakes are made clear in the amicus brief of the pro-jury, generally pro-plaintiff groups the bar association American Association for Justice, and the often allied Public Justice. 

Schein II Amicus Brief 10.20 Master 1130 am

Biden calls for emergency OSHA order to reduce covid workplace threat

 

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with former OSHA head, and epidemiologist David Michaels 

OSHA: Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety

Within hours of his inauguration, President Biden moved swiftly to direct the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to promulgate an emergency standard to protect workers from COVID-19. The President signed an Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety on January 21, 2021.

Policy

“Ensuring the health and safety of workers is a national priority and a moral imperative.  Healthcare workers and other essential workers, many of whom are people of color and immigrants, have put their lives on the line during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.  It is the policy of my Administration to protect the health and safety of workers from COVID-19.

EPA finalizes scientific transparency rule limiting which studies can be used to protect public health - The Washington Post

EPA finalizes scientific transparency rule limiting which studies can be used to protect public health - The Washington Post

By 

Juliet Eilperin and 

Brady Dennis

Jan. 5, 2021 at 10:51 a.m. EST

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The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule to limit what research it can use to craft public health protections, a move opponents argue is aimed at crippling the agency’s ability to more aggressively regulate the nation’s air and water.

The “Strengthening Transparency in Pivotal Science Underlying Significant Regulatory Actions and Influential Scientific Information” rule, which the administration began pursuing early in President Trump’s term, would require researchers to disclose the raw data involved in their public health studies before the agency could rely upon their conclusions. It will apply this new set of standards to “dose-response studies,” which evaluate how much a person’s exposure to a substance increases the risk of harm.

While EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler signed the final rule last week, he announced it Tuesday at a virtual session hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that advocates fewer federal regulations and disputes the idea that climate change poses a major threat to the United States. 

Crooked Path to Abolition - Oakes reviewed by Wood - The New York Times

OTHERWISE: Crooked Path to Abolition - Oakes reviewed by Wood - The New York Times: William Lloyd Garrison's - "covenant with death and agreement with hell" or  Lincoln's "a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to...

Combating COVID-19 | The White House

Combating COVID-19 | The White House

The American people deserve an urgent, robust, and professional response to the growing public health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. President Biden believes that the federal government must act swiftly and aggressively to help protect and support our families, small businesses, first responders, and caregivers essential to help us face this challenge, those who are most vulnerable to health and economic impacts, and our broader communities – not to blame others or bail out corporations.

The Biden-Harris administration will always:

• Listen to science
• Ensure public health decisions are informed by public health professionals
• Promote trust, transparency, common purpose, and accountability in our government

President Biden and Vice President Harris have a seven-point plan to beat COVID-19.

Ensure all Americans have access to regular, reliable, and free testing.

• Double the number of drive-through testing sites.
• Invest in next-generation testing, including at home tests and instant tests, so we can scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude.
• Stand up a Pandemic Testing Board like Roosevelt’s War Production Board. It’s how we produced tanks, planes, uniforms, and supplies in record time, and it’s how we will produce and distribute tens of millions of tests.
• Establish a U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps to mobilize at least 100,000 Americans across the country with support from trusted local organizations in communities most at risk to perform culturally competent approaches to contact tracing and protecting at-risk populations.

Fix personal protective equipment (PPE) problems for good.

President Biden is taking responsibility and giving states, cities, tribes, and territories the critical supplies they need.

• Fully use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of masks, face shields, and other PPE so that the national supply of personal protective equipment exceeds demand and our stores and stockpiles — especially in hard-hit areas that serve disproportionately vulnerable populations — are fully replenished.
• Build immediately toward a future, flexible American-sourced and manufactured capability to ensure we are not dependent on other countries in a crisis.

Provide clear, consistent, evidence-based guidance for how communities should navigate the pandemic – and the resources for schools, small businesses, and families to make it through.

• Social distancing is not a light switch. It is a dial. President Biden will direct the CDC to provide specific evidence-based guidance for how to turn the dial up or down relative to the level of risk and degree of viral spread in a community, including when to open or close certain businesses, bars, restaurants, and other spaces; when to open or close schools, and what steps they need to take to make classrooms and facilities safe; appropriate restrictions on size of gatherings; when to issue stay-at-home restrictions.
• Establish a renewable fund for state and local governments to help prevent budget shortfalls, which may cause states to face steep cuts to teachers and first responders.
• Call on Congress to pass an emergency package to ensure schools have the additional resources they need to adapt effectively to COVID-19.
• Provide a “restart package” that helps small businesses cover the costs of operating safely, including things like plexiglass and PPE.

OTHERWISE: Lawyers - en masse - call for Giuliani to be disciplined, suspended

OTHERWISE: Lawyers - en masse - call for Giuliani to be disciplined, suspended

Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety | The White House

Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety | The White House

President Biden's 17 First Day Executive Orders in Detail - The New York Times

President Biden's 17 Executive Orders in Detail - The New York Times

Rush to judgment...FDA v. American College of OBGYNs

OTHERWISE: Rush to judgment...FDA v. American College of OBGYNs

The Supreme Court, 6-3, continuing its pattern of early intervention in matters before the District and Courts of Appeals, has stayed an order of the District Court which had enjoined the FDA's requirement that a woman may be dispensed mifepristone, an abortifacient drug, must appear in person at a hospital or doctor's office.

The Supreme Court’s Dangerous New Crusade Against Science Is Just Beginning

The Supreme Court’s Dangerous New Crusade Against Science Is Just Beginning 

By David R. Lurie - Daily Beast -December 9, 2020

Five Justices of the United States Supreme Court just declared war on science by overriding the judgment of New York State’s governor and health-care professionals and nullifying emergency limitations on in-person religious worship in New York City areas most heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic—doing so just as the city is on the precipice of another uncontrollable public health disaster. This astoundingly reckless action by the new reactionary court majority established with the appointment of Amy Coney Barret amounts to an opening salvo in what is certain to be an ongoing judicial campaign against scientifically informed government officials the justices believe have been targeting “traditional” religion.

Earlier this year, a five-justice majority, comprised of the Supreme Court’s then four relatively liberal Justices (including the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and Chief Justice Roberts, rejected applications to void two similar pandemic-related regulations of indoor worship services as violative of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. As Roberts explained, the court has long reasoned that the “Constitution principally entrusts ‘[t]he safety and health of the people’ to the politically accountable officials of the states," who should generally not be “subject to second-guessing by an ‘unelected federal judiciary,’ which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people.”