The First Amendment and Minority Rights

The FDA and 23andMe: violating the First Amendment or protecting the rights of consumers?

One of the largest direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing facilities, 23andMe, was ordered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to cease marketing its Personal Genome Service (PGS) test on Nov. 22, 2013 (1 ). This occurred after 23andMe failed to respond to questions from the FDA about the analytical and clinical validity of this test (see Table 1 for definitions). In response to th...

Filters and the First Amendment

Smoking and the First Amendment.

2351 provide solutions to all the complex problems of health worker migration, it offers needed guidance on possible policy and legislative approaches. There is growing evidence that its legal framework can work as a platform for cooperation to strengthen health workforce systems. Sixtynine countries have thus far designated a national authority responsible for the exchange of information on he...

Physicians and the First Amendment.

In the November elections, the citizens of three states resoundingly defeated initiatives aimed at curtailing reproductive rights. In Colorado, a proposed amendment to the state’s Constitution would have given the same legal rights to fertilized eggs as to living persons. This amendment, which was rejected by a wide margin, would have had broad ramifications for abortion rights, the use of cont...

Conduct and Belief: Public Employees' First Amendment Rights to Free Expression and Political Affiliation

Two lines of Supreme Court decisions define the extent to which the Constitution protects public employees1 from dismissal for the exercise of their First Amendment rights.2 The first set of cases governs the employees' right to speak on matters of public concern; the second governs their right to political affiliation. However, the Court has not explained the relationship between these two app...