Commentary

Experts: Suing the Government Not an Option to End Shutdown

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “What I fear is this administration and our Republican colleagues in the Senate have forgotten is that this is the people’s house,” said U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pennsylvania).

Published

6 years ago

January 20, 2019

Oakland Post

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

As the government shutdown enters an unprecedented fifth week, some are calling for drastic measures to end the stalemate that has 800,000 government employees either working without pay or altogether furloughed and unable to put food on the table.

In a recent column, Charles Ellison, a political strategist and host of the radio program, “Reality Check” on WURD Radio, said Congressional Republicans could help re-open the government by simply corralling enough votes in both the House and Senate to arrive at the two-thirds majority needed to override any Presidential veto of the federal budget.

But Congressional Republicans – led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — refuse to do that. McConnel claims that not only is he awaiting a deal between Congressional Democrats and the White House, but he also needs approval from the president before taking action.

“Which brings to mind three questions:

Why haven’t Congressional Democrats sued Congressional Republicans?
Could states do that instead?
Why are Members of Congress still getting paid?”

“I don’t know if suing will get us anywhere in any type of manner,” said Delaware County, Pennsylvania Democratic Chair Colleen Guiney.

“I’m not sure if it’s an option but Democrats in Congress have seven bills to reopen the government, but McConnell is refusing to consider any of the bills. The Senate should respect the will of the people,” Guiney said.

U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pennsylvania) said she and other Democrats have worked tirelessly to find and offer solutions to reopen the government as thousands of federal employees have gone without pay and are struggling to pay their bills and feed their families.

“What I fear is this administration and our Republican colleagues in the Senate have forgotten is that this is the people’s house,” Scanlon said. “We have an obligation to work for them. Refusing to uphold that commitment, that promise, is a slap in the face to the American people,” she said.

Former Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Alex Charlton said his guess is that if Congressional Democrats did sue Congressional Republicans it would be the “nuclear option.”

“It would significantly delay any progress towards an actual resolution,” he said.

Unlike the federal government, a state-level government shutdown in Pennsylvania is unlikely because a court decision mandates that state employees must be paid as long as the state is still collecting tax revenue, Charlton added.

“The Republican legislature has been diligent in ensuring that the state’s expenses do not outpace its revenue. Any increase beyond that would require tax increases, which the citizens of Pennsylvania do not want,” he said.

As to why federal lawmakers continue to draw a paycheck despite the shutdown, Charlton said the salaries of U.S. senators and representatives are paid by the treasury and are set by Congress itself.

“Members of Congress are paid under legislation that is separate from the appropriations bill that funds most of the government. The tax dollars that members of Congress are paid with do not come from the same budget used to pay other federal employees,” Charlton said.

Terry Madonna, a professor of Public Affairs and Director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College, said there’s no basis for a lawsuit.

“It’s a legislative function not a judiciary one,” Madonna said.

“Folks injured by the shutdown might sue but the courts would get involved in the separation of powers doctrine. That’s been in the courts now, but a federal judge refused to rule on the charge,” he said.

More pointedly, Professor Garrett Epps who’s a professor of law at the University of Baltimore, said the Constitution would not allow members of Congress to be sued for any vote or failure to vote in Congress because the Speech or Debate Clause would cover that.

“I also know that this shutdown only affects one-quarter of the federal budget so quite a few employees are still being paid like members of Congress,” Epps said.

Further, it’s Congress’ job and they make the rules so there’s no legal penalty if they don’t reopen the government, said Justin Levitt, a Constitutional law scholar and professor at Loyola Law School.

“The Constitution allows Congress to fund government, and everybody assumes that federal officials would want federal activity. But it doesn’t require Congress to fund the government,” Levitt said.

“So there’s nothing to be gained by a lawsuit. It would fail,” he said, noting that there’s currently a federal lawsuit by federal officials who aren’t getting paid, saying that it violates the 13th Amendment to force them to come to work unpaid.

However, “the courts so far have said that because those officials could quit and get another job, they don’t win either. At least so far,” Levitt said.

Also, another reason members of Congress continue to receive their pay despite the shutdown is that 75 percent of the government had already been funded prior to the shutdown, Levitt said.

“Some members have refused their salary or donated their salary, but not everybody. Ultimately, the pressure here is going to be political, rather than legal. Enough people get ticked off, and then this shutdown ends,” Levitt said.

Finally, Michael J. Gerhart who’s the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill, said the shutdown is all governed by politics.

“That is, McConnell remains politically accountable for his decisions, just as Trump and the Democrats are politically accountable for theirs,” Gerhart said.

“McConnell has the power under Senate rules to block votes on legislative matters he does not wish to bring to a vote, and there is no legal basis on which Democrats could challenge his decision.”

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Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

Published

1 day ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

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Activism

Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

Published

1 day ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.

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Activism

AI Is Reshaping Black Healthcare: Promise, Peril, and the Push for Improved Results in California

Black Californians experience some of the worst health outcomes in the state due to systemic inequities, limited healthcare access, and exclusion from medical research. 16.7% of Black adults report fair or poor health, versus 11.5% of Whites. Black adults have the highest death rates from prostate, breast, colorectal, and lung cancer. Statewide, diabetes affects 13.6% of Black adults versus 9.1% of Whites, and 27% of Black adults over 65 have heart disease, compared to 22% of Whites. Life expectancy for Black Californians is about five years shorter than the state average.

Published

2 days ago

April 27, 2025

Oakland Post

(Left to right:) Dr. Akilah Weber Pierson. CBM file photo. Dr. Timnit Gebru is DAIR’s founder and executive director. Photo courtesy of Dr. Gebru. Judy Wawira Gichoya, MD, MS, is an associate professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Gichoya serves as co-director in leading the Healthcare AI Innovation and Translational Informatics (HITI) Lab. Trained as both an informatician and an interventional radiologist, Dr. Gichoya’s work is centered around using data science to study health equity. Photo provided by the Emory University Winship Cancer Institute.

Joe W. Bowers Jr.
California Black Media

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how Californians receive medical care – diagnosing diseases, predicting patient needs, streamlining treatments, and even generating medical notes for doctors.

While AI holds promise, it also poses risks, particularly for Black patients. It can provide faster diagnoses and expand access to care, but it may also misdiagnose conditions, delay treatment, or overlook patient’s critical needs. AI’s impact on Black patients depends on how biases in medical data and algorithms are addressed in its development.

“As we progress toward a society with increased use of AI technology, it is critical that the biases and stereotypes that Black Americans have faced are not perpetuated in our future innovations,” said Dr. Akilah Weber Pierson (D – San Diego), a physician and state senator spearheading legislative efforts to address AI bias in healthcare.

Why AI Matters for Black Californians

Benefits and Risks of AI in Healthcare

AI processes vast amounts of medical data using computer algorithms designed to identify patient health patterns, helping doctors to diagnose diseases, recommend treatment, and increase patient care efficiency. By analyzing scans, lab results, and patient history, AI can detect diseases

earlier, giving it the potential to improve care for Black patients, who face higher risks of prostate cancer, diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.

Dr. Judy Gichoya, an Interventional radiologist at the Emory University Winship Cancer Institute and AI researcher at Emory’s Healthcare AI Innovation and Translational Informatics (HITI) Lab, sees AI as a tool with great potential but cautions that its effectiveness depends on the diversity of the data it is trained on. She says, “Without diverse datasets, AI could overlook critical signs of diseases, especially in underrepresented populations like Black patients.”

Dr. Timnit Gebru, a computer scientist and AI ethics expert, is the founder and Executive Director of DAIR (Distributed AI Research Institute) in Oakland. She has extensively studied bias in AI systems and their impact on marginalized groups.

Gebru acknowledges that AI has the potential to improve healthcare by enhancing efficiency and expanding access to medical resources. But, like Gichoya she strongly stresses that for AI to be effective and equitable it needs to be subject to rigorous oversight.

AI is already helping doctors personalize cancer treatment by identifying biomarkers and genetic mutations. UCSF and Stanford Health use AI to analyze tumor DNA to match patients with the most effective chemotherapy or immunotherapy.

In diabetes care, AI predicts blood sugar fluctuations, helping doctors adjust treatment. It helps radiologists in early disease detection and identifies sepsis sooner, reducing hospital deaths. In cardiology, AI detects early signs of heart disease, spotting plaque buildup or abnormal heart rhythms before symptoms appear. It also helps predict strokes by analyzing brain scans to determine risk and guide intervention.

Kaiser Permanente uses AI scribes to reduce paperwork and improve patient interactions. Covered California has partnered with Google

Cloud to use AI to streamline document verification and eligibility decisions.

Despite these advancements, AI systems trained on biased medical data can perpetuate inequities for Black patients.

Gebru explains, “If AI learns from historically discriminatory medical decisions—such as undertreating Black patients—it will scale those biases.”

A notable example is in dermatology, where AI frequently misdiagnoses conditions in Black patients because most training datasets are based on lighter-skinned individuals. “Melanoma looks very different on darker skin,” Gebru notes. “It’s not just darker—it often appears differently, like under toenails, a pattern AI trained mostly on lighter skin won’t detect.”

Another risk of AI in healthcare is automation bias, where healthcare providers over-rely on AI, even when it contradicts medical expertise. “Doctors who would have prescribed medications accurately without AI sometimes make mistakes while using automated tools because they over-trust these systems,” Gebru adds.

AI-driven health insurance claim denials are a growing concern. UnitedHealthcare faces a class-action lawsuit for allegedly using an unregulated AI algorithm to deny rehabilitation coverage to elderly and disabled patients.

Beyond bias, AI also poses an environmental threat. AI systems require enormous amounts of energy for computing and massive amounts of water to cool data centers, which exacerbates climate change, an issue that already disproportionately impacts Black communities.

Trump Administration and DEI Impact

The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) threatens funding for AI bias research in healthcare.

Less federal support could stall progress in making AI systems fairer and more accurate, increasing discrimination risks for Black patients.

California’s Legislative and Regulatory Response

Recognizing AI’s risks in healthcare, California lawmakers and state officials are implementing regulations. Weber Pierson introduced Senate Bill (SB) 503 to ensure that AI algorithms used in healthcare are tested for racial bias before implementation.

“We’ve already seen how biased medical devices like pulse oximeters can fail Black patients,” Weber Pierson explains. “If algorithms used in patient care aren’t inclusive, they’re not going to accurately serve melanated individuals.”

At a press conference introducing SB 503, Weber Pierson stressed that AI must be held accountable. “This bill focuses on ensuring that software used as an accessory to healthcare staff delivers sound, nondiscriminatory decisions that promote equitable outcomes.”

Other legislative efforts include Senate Bill (SB) 1120, by Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), which stops insurance companies from using AI alone to deny or delay care and Assembly Bill (AB) 3030, by Assemblymember Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), which requires healthcare providers to inform patients when AI is used in their care.

Attorney General Rob Bonta has issued a legal advisory barring AI from unfairly denying healthcare claims, falsifying records, or restricting access to care based on medical history. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2023 executive order directs state agencies to assess AI’s impact and establish consumer protections, particularly in healthcare.

Actions Black Patients and Families Can Take

As AI becomes more common in healthcare, Black Californians can ensure fair treatment by asking if AI is used, seeking second opinions, and supporting groups addressing algorithmic bias.

They can:

Ask their healthcare providers whether AI played a role in their diagnosis or treatment.
Request second opinions if an AI-generated diagnosis seems questionable.
Advocate for AI policies and legislation promoting fairness and accountability. · Engage with community health organizations like the California Black Health Network (CBHN) that is engaged in ensuring AI is developed in ways to improve health outcomes for Black patients.

Rhonda Smith, CBHN’s executive director, says bias in medical algorithms must be eliminated. “There should never be any race-based adjustment in delivering patient care,” she said.

CBHN supports inclusive research and legislation like SB 503 to ensure AI promotes equity.

Ensuring AI Benefits All Communities

As a legislator, Weber Pierson is pushing for stronger safeguards to ensure AI serves all patients equitably. She says, “Innovation and technology are good, but new challenges arise if we don’t move in a direction inclusive and thoughtful of all people who utilize the healthcare space.”

AI has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, but experts warn it must be developed and regulated with transparency, accountability, and fairness – ensuring it reduces rather than worsens, racial health disparities.