CARDOZO JOURNAL OF
EQUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Enacted in 1975, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) set out to provide children with disabilities access to free, appropriate public education (“FAPE”).[1] Last month, IDEA began to face threats as the Trump administration announced its intentions to move special-education programs from the U.S. Department of Education (“DE”) to the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”)—a shift that critics warn could undermine, or even dismantle, decades of s

In 2025, the New York Appellate Division quietly signaled a departure from a core, and outdated, tenet of American custody law.[1] In Matter of Fenton v. Smith, the Fourth Department reversed a family court order modifying custody, holding that the record was “insufficient” to determine the child’s “best interests,” “particularly where, as here, the court failed to appoint an Attorney for the Child at the contested hearing.”[2] In Matter of Fenton, the Appellate Division rev

In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court held that a city may enforce generally applicable anti-camping ordinances against unhoused individuals without violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.[1] Although the Eighth Amendment prohibits the criminalization of status, it does permit states to punish conduct.[2] The Court in Grants Pass viewed the anti-camping ordinance as one addressing the conduct of camping, as opposed to the s

New York City has been the powerhouse of construction and new development for decades.[1] To safely conduct these developments, construction companies place temporary sidewalk sheds or scaffolding as required by New York City safety laws.[2] Scaffolding is “a temporary framework used in construction to support workers and materials.”[3] In New York City, its use is often triggered by a five-year inspection cycle for buildings over six stories, and it must remain in place unt