CARDOZO JOURNAL OF
EQUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Shadow Nursing Home Ownership: How a Failure in Government Oversight of For-Profit Nursing Homes in New York has Allowed Profits to Balloon and Standards of Care to Plummet

Marissa Espinoza

Complex corporate nursing home structures have become commonplace in for-profit nursing home ownership. These structures, designed to shield owners from regulation and liability, allow owners to evade public scrutiny by obscuring the identity of true owners and allow the true owners to direct revenue to other companies they own or benefit from, such as staffing agencies, payroll businesses, and management companies. This has led to a deterioration in the standard of care for nursing home residents, society’s most vulnerable population, while providing a boon in profits for the true owners. Money that should be spent on care is instead diverted to high-overhead contractors and above-market rents, which further enriches the beneficial owners of the nursing homes . . .

The Roberts Court’s Transformative Religious Freedom Cases: The Doctrine and the Politics of Grievance

Stephen M. Feldman

Numerous commentators are speculating about where the new incarnation of the Roberts Court, with its solid bloc of six conservative justices, will take constitutional law. Will the Court resurrect the non-delegation doctrine, dormant since 1935, as a way to undermine the administrative state? Will the Court overrule Roe v. Wade and eliminate the right to choose abortion? The justices themselves have hinted in their opinions at potential dramatic changes. But in one area, First Amendment religious freedom cases, the justices have already gone further. Under the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, the Court has begun to dismantle decades-old doctrines while articulating new approaches. This Article analyzes where the justices are taking religious freedom and why they are doing it . . . 

Hostile Shores: Racial Exclusion Laws and the West Coast

Brendan Williams

Today the West Coast is reliably in the Democratic Party’s column.  It was a focal point of attacks from President Trump leading up to his 2020 reelection campaign defeat. Trump falsely accused California of sending mail-in ballots to undocumented immigrants for the 2020 election. He held a “California Sanctuary State Roundtable” in which, among other things, he referred to immigrants as “animals.” He attacked the state of Washington and city of Seattle over racial injustice protests, suggesting he would federalize the response. After the shooting in Portland, Oregon of a right-wing supporter in 2020, amidst ongoing racial injustice protests, Trump called the city’s mayor a “fool” and reportedly was “encouraging his supporters to move into Portland in the wake of the shooting. After the shooting, the president shared a video of his supporters driving into Portland and called those in Saturday’s caravan ‘GREAT PATRIOTS!’” . . .

Leveling the Playing Field in Custody Proceedings in New York City Family Court: Enforcing the Rights of All Parents to Notice and an Unbiased Opportunity to Enforce Their Fundamental Right to Parent their Child

Dana Gambardella

The Administration for Children’s Services (hereinafter “ACS”), aims to “protect and promote the safety and well-being of New York City’s children, young people, families, and communities by providing excellent child welfare. . .” The organization seeks to ensure that no child “will be left to struggle with abuse or neglect.” The majority of the cases brought to Family Court by ACS are not brought because of a risk of serious harm to the child or children. Rather, neglect is overwhelmingly the most common form of child maltreatment. Neglect is fundamentally tied to poverty, and thus disproportionately affects people from racially marginalized backgrounds as “there is a well-known, direct nexus between poverty and race." . . .

How the Farm Bill May Be the Key to Healthier Cities

Fatima Ouedrago

New York City is home to more than eight million people. Fighting for parking, yard space, and living space is a common occurrence. Another scarcity other than yard space or parking space, is the access to affordable healthy produce. Programs like the Harlem Grown and Culinary Arts and Agricultural Training help children explore what food choices are available in their neighborhood through a summer camp program. The children were instructed to count how many grocery stores, delis, and fast food restaurants they encountered during a walk. Shockingly, there were more than twenty fast food restaurants, seventeen delis, and only three supermarkets. On this list, the three supermarkets were the only places where fresh produce could be found. Even then, its affordability limited hundreds of people from being able to purchase them . . .

Blackouts and Holes: Analyzing Cross-Market Geographic  Mergers in the Healthcare Services Market

Hankyul Song

Hospitals are critical upstream suppliers to health plans, accounting for nearly one-third of healthcare spending in the United States today. Many Americans rely on private health insurance to receive healthcare services. Since 2017, private health insurance coverage continued to be more prevalent than public coverage, insuring 67.3 percent of the population and 33.4 percent of the population, respectively. Of the subtypes of health insurance coverage, employer-based insurance is the most common, covering 55.1 percent of the population for all or part of 2018. Healthcare providers have an incentive to merge because a merged firm lowers its costs and increases its profits by achieving “clinical integration.” On the other hand, many health economists are concerned about the growing number of hospital mergers . . .