Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Supreme Court May Lean Toward Laws That Ban Public Sleeping
A majority of the Supreme Court appeared inclined on Monday to uphold a series of local ordinances that allowed a small Oregon city to ban homeless people from sleeping or camping in public spaces. The justices seemed split along ideological lines in the case, which has sweeping implications for how the country deals with a growing homelessness crisis. In a lengthy and, at times, fiery argument that lasted almost two and a half hours, questioning from the justices reflected the complexity of the homelessness debate. (VanSickle, 4/22)
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered Monday outside the U.S. Supreme Court, waving signs that read 鈥淗ousing Not Handcuffs鈥 and 鈥淗ousing Dignity鈥 as they protested moves to legally penalize homelessness while justices heard oral arguments on a case that experts say could change how the country treats its homeless people. (Swenson, 4/22)
The Christian Services Center on Thursday hosted a conference in which homeless services professionals, health care workers and community leaders made plans for shelter and housing ahead of the summer months. 鈥淗ousing is health care,鈥 said Warren Foster, program manager at Orange Blossom Family Health Center, a medical service center for people without homes. (Caraballo, 4/22)
On the gun violence epidemic 鈥
The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Biden administration acted legally when it implemented a crackdown on the sale of do-it-yourself 鈥済host gun鈥 kits. The justices announced Monday that they will take up a regulation Attorney General Merrick Garland issued in 2022 that sought to consider such kits as firearms so they can鈥檛 be used to make untraceable weapons sold without background checks and frequently used in crimes. (Gerstein, 4/22)
Treating gunshot wounds on children was not what Mikael Petrosyan expected when he entered pediatrics. Petrosyan has been working as a pediatric surgeon at the Children's National Hospital for more than a decade, and he has treated many children injured by guns. ... "It's a devastating thing to do, to lose a child for something that has been caused by guns," Petrosyan said. "It's not an accident. It was totally preventable in many ways." (Adams and Martin, 4/19)
