The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Trinity Lutheran, and Trumpism: Codifying Fiction with Administrative Gaslighting

This article addresses the Trump administration’s consistent misinterpretation and misapplication of legal precedent to support unnecessary religious exemptions that exceed Constitutional mandates and impair the rights of third parties to access federal services and programs. Proponents of this routinized repeal of civil rights protections argue that the Trump administration is merely restoring the correct balance of religious liberties in the federal government. However, the regulations and policies included in this campaign unconstitutionally broaden the already robust religious protections provided by statutes and court decisions and have the effect of dismantling the civil rights infrastructure of the past 50 years. Despite the absence of clear guidance from the Court, the Trump administration has consistently pointed to Trinity Lutheran Inc., v. Comer and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. as mandates to protect and enable religious-based discrimination by federal grantees and contractors delivering federal services. In doing so, the administration has dismissed the consensus of legal scholars and commentators regarding the limitations of these opinions. This article concludes that, given the faulty legal support of these cases, all regulations implemented under them are legally specious and should be vacated by courts when challenged. The federal register is no place for “alternative facts.

From Liberation To (Re)Criminalization: \u3cem\u3eDobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization\u3c/em\u3e, Bodily Autonomy, and the Expansion of State Rights

For more than a generation, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the constitutionally protected right to an abortion, and, in turn, the dignity-affirming power of reproductive autonomy and its role in designing one’s own destiny. The Court’s endorsement of the liberatory value of bodily autonomy in Roe v. Wade, as later affirmed in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, rejected attempts to justify restrictive prohibitions on abortion as valid exercises of state police powers. However, the Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization threatens to fundamentally redefine the boundaries between the rights of individuals and those of the state. Concluding that the decisions in Roe and Casey were “egregiously wrong,” Justice Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs asserts that the Court’s recognition of an individual right to reproductive autonomy damaged our democratic infrastructure because the decision to grant or withhold such a right should be left to the states. This Article explores the Court’s broad abdication of abortion regulation to state legislatures within the context of the expansion of state regulation of bodily autonomy, specifically in the areas of transgender rights, gender expression, and access to gender affirming healthcare. Reproductive rights jurisprudence, including cases like Griswold, Casey, and Roe, undoubtedly provided a recognizable constitutional frame for the evolution of modern transgender rights challenges. Despite the inherent differences in the nature of the lived and legal realities of cisgender women and transgender people, both communities share common demands for dignity and self-determination informed by access to life-defining healthcare services and individual expression. The Court’s dismissal of a fundamental right to abortion in Dobbs sanctioned—if not invited—more restrictive state-level regulation of reproductive care and narrowed respect for individual autonomy in the abortion context. Given the legal and societal commonalities between access to gender-affirming care and reproductive care, it should be no surprise that state legislatures are waging similar lines of attack on the rights of transgender people. This Article proceeds in three parts. Part I explores the evolving judicial treatment of constitutional challenges to state regulation of transgender status and identity. This part positions the right to free gender expression and access to necessary gender-affirming care within the broader conversation regarding the right to bodily autonomy. Part II addresses the state legislative landscape regarding the regulation and attempted erasure of transgender lives immediately before and after the Dobbs decision. Finally, Part III examines the impact of Dobbs on the future viability of autonomy-based claims involving transgender rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Recognizing the importance of the “second founding,” this section argues that any reliance on the original design of structural federalism to realize dignity or individual autonomy would be misplaced today. Instead, this Article urges the use of a revolutionary lens that is faithful to the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment—a lens that is essential to understand the liberatory nature of the early transgender and reproductive rights cases, as well as the human cost of the impending retrenchment

Plan de negocio para una plataforma tecnol?gica de intermediaci?n de servicios y productos para fiestas infantiles en la ciudad de Lima

Party Center es un negocio de intermediaci?n que busca integrar a proveedores de art?culos y servicios de fiestas infantiles con padres de familia que deseen organizar las fiestas de cumplea?os a sus hijos. Party Center consiste en una plataforma tecnol?gica en donde los usuarios podr?n encontrar informaci?n centralizada de proveedores, los productos o servicios que ofrecen y las experiencias de compra de otras personas. Del mismo modo, los proveedores tendr?n a trav?s de Party Center un canal de ventas adicional, en donde podr?n ser visualizados y solicitados por distintos clientes. Party Center aprovecha de estrategias provenientes de la Segmentaci?n de Mercado y el Oc?ano Azul, ya que, durante el estudio del negocio, no se encontraron competidores o negocios que est?n brindando una soluci?n parecida. El objetivo principal ser? diferenciarnos por un tipo de servicio y el time to market. El principal inter?s de Party Center consiste en brindar una soluci?n capaz de proveer un entorno integrador donde puedan converger tanto proveedores de productos y servicios como padres de familia

Memory development: implications for adults recalling childhood experiences in the courtroom

Adults frequently provide compelling, detailed accounts of early childhood experiences in the courtroom. Judges and jurors are asked to decide guilt or innocence based solely on these decades-old memories using 'common sense' notions about memory. However, these notions are not in agreement with findings from neuroscientific and behavioural studies of memory development. Without expert guidance, judges and jurors may have difficulty in properly adjudicating the weight of memory evidence in cases involving adult recollections of childhood experiences

The Oxytocin Receptor (OXTR) Contributes to Prosocial Fund Allocations in the Dictator Game and the Social Value Orientations Task

Background: Economic games observe social decision making in the laboratory that involves real money payoffs. Previously we have shown that allocation of funds in the Dictator Game (DG), a paradigm that illustrates costly altruistic behavior, is partially determined by promoter-region repeat region variants in the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor gene (AVPR1a). In the current investigation, the gene encoding the related oxytocin receptor (OXTR) was tested for association with the DG and a related paradigm, the Social Values Orientation (SVO) task. Methodology/Principal Findings: Association (101 male and 102 female students) using a robust-family based test between 15 single tagging SNPs (htSNPs) across the OXTR was demonstrated with both the DG and SVO. Three htSNPs across the gene region showed significant association with both of the two games. The most significant association was observed with rs1042778 (p = 0.001). Haplotype analysis also showed significant associations for both DG and SVO. Following permutation test adjustment, significance was observed for 2–5 locus haplotypes (p,0.05). A second sample of 98 female subjects was subsequently and independently recruited to play the dictator game and was genotyped for the three significant SNPs found in the first sample. The rs1042778 SNP was shown to be significant for the second sample as well (p = 0.004, Fisher’s exact test). Conclusions: The demonstration that genetic polymorphisms for the OXTR are associated with human prosocial decisio

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

Hardware considerations for preclinical magnetic resonance of the kidney

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a noninvasive imaging technology that offers unparalleled anatomical and functional detail, along with diagnostic sensitivity. MRI is suitable for longitudinal studies due to the lack of exposure to ionizing radiation. Before undertaking preclinical MRI investigations of the kidney, the appropriate MRI hardware should be carefully chosen to balance the competing demands of image quality, spatial resolution, and imaging speed, tailored to the specific scientific objectives of the investigation. Here we describe the equipment needed to perform renal MRI in rodents, with the aim to guide the appropriate hardware selection to meet the needs of renal MRI applications.This publication is based upon work from the COST Action PARENCHIMA, a community-driven network funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) program of the European Union, which aims to improve the reproducibility and standardization of renal MRI biomarkers. This chapter on hardware considerations for renal MRI in small animals is complemented by two separate publications describing the experimental procedure and data analysis

How doctors generate diagnostic hypotheses: a study of radiological diagnosis with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

In medical practice, diagnostic hypotheses are often made by physicians in the first moments of contact with patients; sometimes even before they report their symptoms. We propose that generation of diagnostic hypotheses in this context is the result of cognitive processes subserved by brain mechanisms that are similar to those involved in naming objects or concepts in everyday life

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Trinity Lutheran, and Trumpism: Codifying Fiction with Administrative Gaslighting

This article addresses the Trump administration’s consistent misinterpretation and misapplication of legal precedent to support unnecessary religious exemptions that exceed Constitutional mandates and impair the rights of third parties to access federal services and programs. Proponents of this routinized repeal of civil rights protections argue that the Trump administration is merely restoring the correct balance of religious liberties in the federal government. However, the regulations and policies included in this campaign unconstitutionally broaden the already robust religious protections provided by statutes and court decisions and have the effect of dismantling the civil rights infrastructure of the past 50 years. Despite the absence of clear guidance from the Court, the Trump administration has consistently pointed to Trinity Lutheran Inc., v. Comer and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. as mandates to protect and enable religious-based discrimination by federal grantees and contractors delivering federal services. In doing so, the administration has dismissed the consensus of legal scholars and commentators regarding the limitations of these opinions. This article concludes that, given the faulty legal support of these cases, all regulations implemented under them are legally specious and should be vacated by courts when challenged. The federal register is no place for “alternative facts.

Queer Rights After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

Professor Robin Maril of Willamette University College of Law presented her work Queer Rights After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. This article asks what Dobbs means for our understanding of individual liberty, specifically with respect to queer rights.https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/faculty-workshops/1064/thumbnail.jp