Protecting Natural Resources - Forever: The Obligations of State Officials to Uphold Forever Constitutional Provisions

This Article analyzes the attacks on a state constitutional conservation lands program since the election of a governor and state legislature opposed to environmental regulation in 2010 – a precursor to current happenings at the federal level under the Trump administration. Former Florida Governor Rick Scott and his administration have spent an average of over $40 million a year in taxpayer money to defend and, in most cases, pay judgments, in lawsuits challenging mandates of the Florida Constitution. I examine this issue of ignoring or deliberately violating constitutional requirements through the lens of state constitutional provisions that protect natural resources, focusing on Florida and New York. Both states have explicit and specific protections for conservation and forest lands, which differ from constitutional provisions in other states that establish policies and delegate implementation authority to state legislatures. New York adopted its Forever Wild constitutional provision in 1894, and the text of that provision has remained intact, despite attempts to amend the provision or to pass legislation that would violate it. In Florida, there are two constitutional provisions that protect conservation lands under the Florida Forever program. This program has widespread public support and, at its inception, had non-partisan political support as well, until Rick Scott was elected to be governor. During his tenure, there have been repeated attempts to sell or trade conservation lands protected under the Florida Constitution. Instead of spending taxpayer money to defend violations of these constitutional provisions, Florida state officials should uphold the oaths they made to “support, protect, and defend” the state constitution. Natural resource protections in the Florida and New York constitutions provide noteworthy guidance for other states to initiate constitutional amendments for similar protections. In addition, there should be personal repercussions for state officials who willfully violate these state constitutional commands and restitution of taxpayer money spent to defend unlawful behavior

The Big Chill: Are Public Participation Rights Being Slapp-Ed?

This article focuses on the Petition Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and addresses a confounding situation caused by Supreme Court precedents that give greater protection to persons who engage in illegal business practices than to citizens who petition their governments. This dichotomy is especially detrimental to environmental protection. The crux of the conflict lies in which standard courts should use to determine whether the petitioning activity is protected: the subjective Free Speech standard grafted onto Petition Clause activities or the objective standard initially developed by the Supreme Court for petition activities in antitrust cases. The result has been the application of the subjective standard for tort allegations, including business torts, and the objective standard for alleged illegal business practices. The Supreme Court’s failure to protect petition activities in some cases has resulted in a phenomenon known as SLAPPs, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. The essential characteristic of these lawsuits is that the litigant, usually a business, does not bring the lawsuit to win; the lawsuit is brought to make it costly and difficult for the petitioner to protest for fear of being enmeshed in a protracted legal proceeding. Unfortunately, many environmental activists have tort claims brought against them, especially when the economic stakes are high. The difficulties presented in defending against tort allegations have significantly chilled citizen engagement with their governments on a variety of issues, but a major portion of SLAPPs involve environmental concerns. This article also examines the myriad of state laws enacted to prevent chilling citizen petition activities, along with the recently released Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA). Many states have enacted anti-SLAPP laws, but those laws vary widely plus not all states have them. The resulting gaps mean that the choice of forum has a significant impact on how protected a citizen’s petitioning activities are from a SLAPP. Widespread adoption of UPEPA should help to reduce some procedural differences by creating uniform rules for court management of these lawsuits. However, UPEPA’s definition section could perpetuate the disparate treatment of tort and illegal business petitioning activities. To give citizens the full benefit of their rights under the Petition Clause, courts should create a uniform rule, applying the objective standard developed in antitrust cases to all Petition Clauses activities. This solution would raise a question with which the Supreme Court has struggled before: whether protections of the Speech and Petition Clauses should be treated the same. In the two Supreme Court decisions addressing this issue, the Court did so but clearly struggled to reach that conclusion in the more recent case. It also limited its holding to the situation presented in that case: whether an individual government employee could bring an employment claim under the Petition Clause that was barred by the Free Speech Clause. The result of the Court’s application of Free Speech standards to Petition Clause cases brought by government employees, however, perpetuates an inequality in the application of the Petition Clause overall: greater protection for people who may engage in illegal business practices than for citizens seeking to protect the environment. To address the demonstrable and significant chilling effect on citizen participation in governance, courts should apply the objective Noerr-Pennington standard to Petition Clause cases related to all forms of governmental regulation

Evaluation of a recombination-resistant coronavirus as a broadly applicable, rapidly implementable vaccine platform

Emerging and re-emerging zoonotic viral diseases are major threats to global health, economic stability, and national security. Vaccines are key for reducing coronaviral disease burden; however, the utility of live-attenuated vaccines is limited by risks of reversion or repair. Because of their history of emergence events due to their prevalence in zoonotic pools, designing live-attenuated coronavirus vaccines that can be rapidly and broadly implemented is essential for outbreak preparedness. Here, we show that coronaviruses with completely rewired transcription regulatory networks (TRNs) are effective vaccines against SARS-CoV. The TRN-rewired viruses are attenuated and protect against lethal SARS-CoV challenge. While a 3-nt rewired TRN reverts via second-site mutation upon serial passage, a 7-nt rewired TRN is more stable, suggesting that a more extensively rewired TRN might be essential for avoiding growth selection. In summary, rewiring the TRN is a feasible strategy for limiting reversion in an effective live-attenuated coronavirus vaccine candidate that is potentially portable across the Nidovirales order

Comparative Pathogenesis of Three Human and Zoonotic SARS-CoV Strains in Cynomolgus Macaques

The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic was characterized by increased pathogenicity in the elderly due to an early exacerbated innate host response. SARS-CoV is a zoonotic pathogen that entered the human population through an intermediate host like the palm civet. To prevent future introductions of zoonotic SARS-CoV strains and subsequent transmission into the human population, heterologous disease models are needed to test the efficacy of vaccines and therapeutics against both late human and zoonotic isolates. Here we show that both human and zoonotic SARS-CoV strains can infect cynomolgus macaques and resulted in radiological as well as histopathological changes similar to those seen in mild human cases. Viral replication was higher in animals infected with a late human phase isolate compared to a zoonotic isolate. While there were significant differences in the number of host genes differentially regulated during the host responses between the three SARS-CoV strains, the top pathways and functions were similar and only apparent early during infection with the majority of genes associated with interferon signaling pathways. This study characterizes critical disease models in the evaluation and licensure of therapeutic strategies against SARS-CoV for human use