Tom Fitton's Judicial Watch Weekly Update | March 08, 2024

New ELECTIONS Lawsuit

Supreme Court Victory for Voters on Trump Ballot Issue
Judicial Watch Sues Illinois to Force Clean Up of Voting Rolls
Judicial Watch Files Complaint against Federal Judges for Woke Discriminatory Preferences
Judicial Watch Files Senate Ethics Complaint against Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
U.S. Invests $558,942 to Apply CRT in ‘Opioid Use Disorder’ Treatment

 

Supreme Court Victory for Voters on Trump Ballot Issue

The United States Supreme Court’s ruling allowing Donald Trump’s name to appear on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot made a powerful and unified statement against the brazen, unconstitutional coup by leftists against the constitutional rights of tens of millions of Americans.

And, thankfully, a Supreme Court majority seems prepared to stop any shady Biden administration, judicial and leftist congressional efforts to overturn a Trump victory based upon false allegations of insurrection.

In January, we filed an amici curiae (friend of the court) brief along with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) in support of former President Donald Trump in his challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court’s unprecedented decision to remove him from the state’s 2024 presidential primary ballot (Donald J. Trump v. Norma Anderson et al. (No. 23-719)).

We and AEF argued that, if the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling was allowed to stand, presidential and other federal elections would be thrown into chaos:

In a basically standardless legal discussion, charges of insurrection can be leveled by imaginative partisans on the basis of many different kinds of inflammatory political actions or speech. Consider:

1. Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a bail fund that helped to free “those protesting on the ground in Minnesota” in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The protests in 20 states following that murder were among the costliest in U.S. history, persisting in some cities for months, and resulting in at least 25 deaths. Protesters attacked federal property and set fire to a federal courthouse. Protests also caused President Trump to evacuate the White House to a secure underground location, as rioters assaulted police officers outside the White House gates.

2. Discussing an anticipated abortion ruling, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told a rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on March 5, 2020, “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” His comments were reproved by the Chief Justice of this Court as “dangerous.” Two years later a man was arrested for threatening behavior directed at Justice Kavanaugh.

3. Recently a number of Republican officials have proposed retaliating for the instant lawsuit by seeking to remove President Biden from their state ballots for abetting an “invasion of eight million” at the southern border of the United States.

4. On June 10, 2017, Sen. Bernie Sanders called President Trump “the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country.” Four days later, one of his supporters opened fire on congressional Republicans at a baseball practice, wounding four, including Rep. Steve Scalise.

All of these facts are fodder for interested partisans seeking to disqualify opposing candidates. If the nation does go “down that path,” presidential elections in the United States will become a more ugly business. Legal maneuvers to remove President Trump from the ballots of various states, and the retaliatory maneuvers they provoke, will create a new, anti-democratic front in the partisan wars. To be blunt, “blue states” will apply Section 3 to harass “red” candidates, while “red states” will apply that provision to harass “blue” candidates.

***

The losers in this process, as here, will be the voters.

The Court should foreclose this kind of warfare now. Amici respectfully submit that the Court should refuse to ratify these maneuvers, and should instead adopt as its policy the observation that “[t]he cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.”

This was a tremendous victory but the battle for free and fair elections continues, and your Judicial Watch will always be on the front lines.

 

Judicial Watch Sues Illinois to Force Clean Up of Voting Rolls

Judicial Watch just filed a major federal lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of Elections and its Executive Director, Bernadette Matthews, over their failure to clean Illinois’ voter rolls and to produce election-related records as required by federal law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) (Judicial Watch Inc. et al. v. Illinois State Board of Elections et al.(No. 1:24-cv-01867)).

The lawsuit requests the court to require Illinois to “develop and implement a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the registrations of ineligible registrants from the voter rolls.”

Our legal pressure ultimately led to the removal of up to four million ineligible voters from voter rolls in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, and elsewhere.

The current lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of Judicial Watch and the nonprofit organizations Illinois Family Action and Breakthrough Ideas, and Carol J. Davis, who is a lawfully registered voter in Illinois.

The NVRA requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove” from the official voter rolls “the names of ineligible voters” who have died or changed residence. The law requires registrations to be canceled when voters fail to respond to address confirmation notices and then fail to vote in the next two general federal elections. In 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed that such removals are mandatory (Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Inst.,138 S. Ct. 1833, 1841-42 (2018)). In July 2023, Judicial Watch successfully sued Illinois for failing to provide access voting list data to a citizens group as federal law requires.

Our new lawsuit details 23 Illinois counties, with a combined registration list of 980,089 voters, reported removing a combined total of only 100 registrations in the last two-year reporting period under a crucial provision of the NVRA. The lawsuit alleges that this is an “absurdly small” number and contends that there “is no possible way these counties can be conducting a general program that makes reasonable effort to cancel registrations of voters who have become ineligible because of a change of residence while removing so few registrations.”

The lawsuit also alleges:

• Illinois’ own reported data show that more than one fifth of its counties removed few or no registrations under a crucial NVRA provision concerning voters who have moved.
• Illinois informed the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that 34 counties simply failed to report any data about removals under that key NVRA provision.
• Nineteen of these counties also failed to report any data regarding registrations removed because of the death of the voter.
• Dozens of other counties failed to report other kinds of important NVRA data to the EAC.

We note that counties typically do not ignore their reporting obligations to the EAC where the data is favorable to them. Rather, this failure suggests non-compliance with the NVRA. In all, 66 of Illinois’ 108 jurisdictions – or 60% of them – either reported fewer unusually low NVRA removals or failed to report a crucial data category to the EAC. These jurisdictions contain a total of 5.8 million registered voters, or about two thirds of Illinois’ 8.8 million registered voters.

In our complaint, we reference a Notice Letter sent in November 2023 to Matthews before filing suit. This letter recounted these failures, and also observed that recent census estimates of citizens over the age of eighteen “suggests that 15 Illinois jurisdictions have more voter registrations than citizens of voting age.” Illinois’ voting rolls are a mess. Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections.  Illinois should take immediate steps to clean its rolls to both prevent fraud and increase voter confidence in the elections.

Judicial Watch is a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of its work, Judicial Watch assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls across the country, among other achievements.

Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads our election law program. Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting rights investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements in dozens of states.

In February 2024 we filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, challenging a Mississippi election law permitting absentee ballots to be received as long as five business days after Election Day.

In December 2023, we sent notice letters to election officials in the District of Columbia, California, and Illinois, notifying them of evident violations of the NVRA, based on their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls. The letters point out that these jurisdictions publicly reported removing few or no ineligible voter registrations under a key provision of the NVRA. The letters threaten federal lawsuits unless the violations are corrected in a timely fashion. In response to our inquiries, Washington, DC, officials admitted that they had not complied with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated names from the voting rolls, promised to remove 37,962 more, and designated another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.”

In July 2023, we filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, supporting the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, which struck down Maine’s policy restricting the use and distribution of the state’s voter registration list (Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Shenna Bellows (No. 23-1361). According to a national studyconducted by Judicial Watch in 2020, Maine’s statewide registration rate was 101% of eligible voters.

In a separate lawsuit, in July 2023 we settled a federal election integrity lawsuit on behalf of the Illinois Conservative Union against the state of Illinois, the Illinois State Board of Elections, and its director, which grants access to the current centralized statewide list of registered voters for the state for the past 15 elections.

In April 2023, Pennsylvania settled with us and admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258 ineligible registrations in response to communications from Judicial Watch. The settlement commits Pennsylvania and five of its counties to public reporting of statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll clean-up efforts for the next five years.

In March 2023, Colorado agreed to settle our NVRA lawsuit alleging that Colorado failed to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. The settlement agreement requires Colorado to provide Judicial Watch with the most recent voter roll data for each Colorado county each year for six years.

In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed the removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since last year, under the terms of a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit Judicial Watch filed in 2017.

We settled a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and promised to take reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter registration lists.

Kentucky also removed hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In February 2022, we settled a voter roll clean-up lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its counties after North Carolina removed over 430,000 inactive registrations from its voter rolls.

In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled in favor of our challenge to the Democratic state legislature’s “extreme” congressional-districts gerrymander.

Illinois Family Action, the non-profit and tax-exempt legislative action arm of Illinois Family Institute, was founded in 2010 to promote the common good and general welfare, primarily by means of education, including direct and grassroots lobbying. IFA works to advance public policies to protect the sanctity of human life, Christian marriage and the natural family, and other initiatives which are consistent with principles of good government.

Breakthrough Ideas is a policy advocacy and education network that advances the causes of peace, prosperity, and freedom by highlighting the virtue of taxpayer-centric and liberty-focused policies and how they benefit all community members.

 

Judicial Watch Files Complaint against Federal Judges for Woke Discriminatory Preferences

As our name implies, we are in a position to closely observe the courts, and when we see malfeasance, we speak up. Here is a good example.

We filed a judicial misconduct complaint against three federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois for standing orders that grant special preferences to lawyers who appear before them based on the lawyers’ race, ethnicity, or gender/sex.

The complaint names Chief Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel, Judge Staci M. Yandle, and Judge David W. Dugan for orders we state are discriminatory and unconstitutional and constitute “conduct prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts.”

On January 7, 2020, Judge Yandle entered a standing order that provides, in pertinent part:

Recognizing the importance of the development of future generations of practitioners through courtroom opportunities, the undersigned encourages the participation of newer, female, and minority attorneys in proceedings in my courtroom, particularly with respect to oral argument … To that end, the Court adopts the following procedures regarding oral arguments as to pending motions:

1. After a motion is fully briefed, as part of a Motion Requesting Oral Argument, a party may alert the Court that, if oral argument is granted, it intends to have a newer, female, or minority attorney argue the motion (or a portion of the motion).

2. If such a request is made, the Court will:

1. Grant the request for oral argument on the motion it if is at all practicable to do so.

2. Strongly consider allocating additional time for oral argument beyond what the Court may otherwise have allocated were a newer, female, or minority attorney not arguing the motion.

3. Permit other more experienced counsel of record the ability to provide some assistance to the newer, female, or minority attorney who is arguing the motion, where appropriate during oral argument.

***

Chief Judge Rosenstengel entered a nearly identical standing order on January 17, 2020, followed by Judge David W. Dugan doing the same on October 6, 2020.

Our complaint states:

The orders are patently discriminatory and unconstitutional as well as patronizing and deeply offensive. They also plainly imply that female and minority attorneys are less competent, less skilled, and less qualified than male and non-minority attorneys and require additional time and assistance to represent their clients. Moreover, they send a clear message to clients that, if they hire female or minority attorneys, they will be afforded advantages that they will not be afforded if they hire male or non-minority attorneys. They also erode litigants’ and the public’s trust and confidence in the justice system.

The complaint alleges the orders violate Rule 4(a)(3). They also violate Judicial Canon 2(A) and the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” We explain:

1. Rule 4(a) of the Rules for Judicial-Conduct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings.

Misconduct is defined as “conduct prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts” and includes “intentional discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, gender, gender identity, pregnancy, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, or disability.”

2. Judicial Cannon 2(A).

Judicial Canon 2(A) requires judges to “comply with the law and should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The orders “are unconstitutional because they equate to government-imposed, race-, ethnicity-, and sex/gender-based discrimination that violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment.”

We conclude:

Courtroom time is a finite resource, and allowing oral argument, additional time, or the assistance of additional counsel based on immutable characteristics like race, ethnicity, and sex/gender is the antithesis of justice and fairness. It also does a substantial disservice to the very persons the orders purport to assist, implying that female and minority lawyers lack the competence, skills, and qualifications of male and non-minority lawyers…. Judicial Watch respectfully requests that swift, corrective action be taken to remediate this ongoing misconduct in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

This woke discrimination has no place in America’s courtrooms. Frankly it is shocking that any federal judge would think it appropriate to engage in flagrant race and sex discrimination in this day and age.

Our lawsuits and FOIA requests on Critical Race Theory and other leftist extremism are extensive:

In January 2024, we sued the Oakland Unified School District in California for records on a racially segregated “playdate” held on August 26, 2023, by one of the district’s elementary schools. The Judicial Watch lawsuit seeks records on the planning and authorization of the “playdate” held by Chabot Elementary School titled “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API [Asian/Pacific Islander] Families.”

In July 2023, we exposed records from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), a component of the United States Department of Defense, which included instructional materials and emails that address topics such as Critical Race Theory, “white privilege,” and Black Lives Matter.

In March 2023, records from the U.S. Department of Defense showed the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) has made race and gender instruction a top priority in the training of cadets.

In July 2022, we sued the Department of Defense for  records related to the United States Naval Academy (USNA) implementing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the training of naval recruits

In August 2022, our client David Flynn, who was removed from his position as head football coach after exercising his right as a parent-citizen to raise concerns about Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter propaganda in his daughter’s seventh-grade history class, settled his civil rights lawsuit against his former employers at Dedham Public Schools. As part of the settlement, the Superintendent of Dedham Public Schools, Michael Welch, acknowledged “the important and valid issues” raised by Flynn and specific changes in school policies because of Flynn’s complaint, including banning teachers from promoting Black Lives Matter to students online.

In June, we received records revealing Critical Race Theory instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. One training slide contains a graphic titled “MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN THE USA.” [Emphasis in original]

 

Judicial Watch Files Senate Ethics Complaint against Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse

It seems that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) was quite busy in Washington pushing bills that benefit his wife in Rhode Island. We’re calling foul.

We hand-delivered an ethics complaint to Chairman Christopher A. Coons (D-CT) and Vice Chairman James Lankford (R-OK) of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics calling for a full investigation into potential ethics violations tied to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse abusing his office to benefit himself and his wife.

There is strong evidence that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse may have violated Senate ethics conflicts of interest rules. The Senate Ethics Committee should immediately investigate this serious issue. Senator Whitehouse seems to have stepped over the line of standard environmental legislative advocacy and used his Senate office to advance his and his wife’s personal and financial interests.”

We argue in support of an investigation:

The publicly available facts suggest that Senator Whitehouse’s legislative activity, particularly his sponsorship of environmental legislation funding his wife’s clients and her specific area of expertise (marine spatial planning), creates a reasonable appearance of a conflict of interest. Given this, further investigation regarding Mrs. Whitehouse’s consulting activities, aided by the Committee’s subpoena power, is warranted.

Senator Whitehouse’s wife, Sandra Thornton Whitehouse, is the president of Ocean Wonks, LLC, a for-profit limited liability environmental consulting company that was chartered (in 2017) and has its principal place of business in Rhode Island. Shortly after her husband’s election to the Senate in 2009, Mrs. Whitehouse (and later her company Ocean Wonks) became a consultant to at least two known 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations focused on environmental issues – Ocean Conservancy (OC) and AltaSea.

Influence Watch found Mrs. Whitehouse’s made slightly over $2.6 million in total compensation from OC over the twelve-year period since FY 2009. Her present level of compensation would make Mrs. Whitehouse the eighth highest earner among OC employees, higher than several OC Vice Presidents.

According to a May 2023 report by The Daily Caller, since his election to the Senate, “Whitehouse has introduced at least 24 ocean-related bills and co-founded the Senate Oceans Caucus in 2011.”

The letter provides a partial list of ten pieces of legislation sponsored or cosponsored by Senator Whitehouse. The five pieces of legislation listed below, which have been enacted into law, likely would (or did) benefit his wife and her environmental clients:

(1) Save Our Seas (“SOS”) Act (ENACTED)

• Signed into law by President Trump in 2018
• Allows NOAA Administrator to declare severe marine debris events and authorize funds to assist with cleanup and response; reauthorizes NOAA Marine Debris Program through FY2022, which supports research on sources of marine debris provides funds to prevent and clean up marine debris at a level of $10 million annually
• Strongly supported by Ocean Conservancy
• Benefitted Ocean Conservancy, which operates extensive ocean debris cleanup operations. For example, Ocean Conservancy, in “partnership” with leftwing environmental private equity firm Circulate Capital, obtained a $35 million, 50% loan portfolio guarantee from USAID to incentivize business development and infrastructure in the “recycling value chain” in South and Southeast Asia. Senator Whitehouse made remarks at the formal launch event for the OC-Circulate Capital partnership at the Wilson Center in D.C.
• OC’s “partner” in this endeavor, Circulate Capital, lists OC’s CEO, Janis Searles Jones, as one of its “Advisors” on its website

(2) Save Our Seas 2.0 Act (“SOS 2.0”) (ENACTED)

• Signed into law by President Trump in 2020
• Established a Marine Debris Response Trust Fund to provide money/resources to respond to marine events; authorized a Genius Prize to support advancements in marine cleanup, packaging, detection, and other designs; created a Marine Debris Foundation to support marine debris efforts globally; conduct new studies to create or expand programs addressing marine debris
• Provided $103 million in FY21 and FY22 funding to support 14 new country and regional programs strongly supported by Ocean Conservancy
• Benefitted Ocean Conservancy, which operates extensive international ocean debris cleanup operations. For example, OC received the largest NOAA Marine Debris Program grant awarded in 2021, totaling $631,770 for work to reduce abandoned, lost, and discarded fishing gear. In 2022, OC again received the highest NOAA Marine Debris Program grant awarded, totaling $361,395, to work with restaurants and convenience stores in Miami-Dade County, Florida, to reduce marine debris.

(3) Offshore Wind Incentives for New Development (WIND) Act (ENACTED)

• Became law as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) of 2022
• The Act “extend[s] the 30 percent Investment Tax Credit for offshore wind through 2025”
• The Act’s passage benefitted Deepwater Wind’s Block Island wind farm

(4) National Ocean Exploration Act (ENACTED)

• Enacted into law as part of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
• The law requires NOAA to undertake comprehensive ocean mapping, formally authorize and improve the existing National Ocean Mapping, Exploration and Characterization Council, and authorizes additional appropriation of $1.4 billion for NOAA’s existing Ocean Exploration and Research Program, its Ocean and Coastal Mapping Program, and its Hydrographic Surveying Program.
• Supported by Ocean Conservancy and directly benefits OC’s marine spatial program headed by Mrs. Whitehouse

(5) National Oceans & Coastal Security Act (ENACTED)

• Enacted into law as part of the 2015 budget bill
• Established the National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund (now known as the National Coastal Resilience Fund), operated by NOAA, to provide grants for programs and activities designed to protect, conserve, and restore ocean and coastal resources and coastal infrastructure
• The National Coastal Resilience Fund has provided over $466 million in grants since its inception
• Strongly supported by OC, which has “partnered” with NOAA “since the inception of NOAA’s marine debris program (MDP) in 2006, including partnership on OC’s International Coastal Cleanup and its Talking Trash & Taking Action education program

The ethics complaint details the Senate Ethics Rule at issue in the Whitehouse matter:

Paragraph one of Senate Ethics Rule 37 states, “A Member . . . shall not receive any compensation, nor shall he permit any compensation to accrue to his beneficial interest from any source, the receipt or accrual of which would occur by virtue of influence improperly exerted from his position as a Member, Officer, or employee.” Paragraph four of Rule 37 further declares that a Senator shall not “knowingly use his official position to introduce or aid the progress or passage of legislation, a principal purpose of which is to further only his pecuniary interest, only the pecuniary interest of his immediate family, or only the pecuniary interest of a limited class of persons or enterprises, when he, or his immediate family, or enterprises controlled by them, are members of the affected class.

Rule 37’s prohibition on conflicts of interest are designed to be broad and robust. The Nelson Report accompanying passage of the ethics rules states that the prohibitions on conflicts of interest are “specifically designed to prevent conflict of interest, or the appearance of such conflict of interest, which is equally damaging to public confidence.” Rule 37 thus “prohibits a member . . . from working for legislation, a principal purpose of which is to enhance his financial interest or the interest of his family.”

Paragraph one was intended “as a broad prohibition against members . . . deriving financial benefit, directly or indirectly, from the use of their official position.” It is broader than quid pro quo bribery, “For example. If a Senator . . . intervened with an executive agency for the purpose of influencing a decision which would result in measurable personal financial gain to him, the provisions of this paragraph would be violated.” Thus, if a Senator uses his official position in a manner that benefits him “indirectly” through his spouse, such spousal compensation would “accrue to his beneficial interest” and violate Paragraph one.

The letter finally asks for robust investigation of Senator Whitehouse’s apparent conflict of interest:

Given Senator Whitehouse’s longstanding practice of sponsoring or cosponsoring legislation that directly benefits his wife and/or her clients, we urge the Senate Ethics Committee to conduct a preliminary investigation to disinter the full extent of Mrs. Whitehouse’s consulting activities, with both for-profit and nonprofit entities, that may create a reasonable appearance of a conflict of interest with Senator Whitehouse’s official duties.

 

U.S. Invests $558,942 to Apply CRT in ‘Opioid Use Disorder’ Treatment

Give them enough time, Biden’s bureaucrats could make even a ham sandwich go woke. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports on their latest effort.

The Biden administration is giving researchers at a public university more than half a million dollars to help them apply controversial critical race theory in the treatment of “opioid use disorder,” which the U.S. government says disproportionately impacts minorities. The study will be guided by a “public health critical race praxis” that assumes racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare access are produced by structural racism and discrimination (SRD). A University of Washington (UW) health professor identified as an addictions health services and disparities researcher, will lead the project which, among other things, seeks to evaluate how disparities in access to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) may have changed in response to COVID-19.

MOUD is an effective approach to the treatment of opioid addiction with medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). First-line treatments that reduce overdose risk include methadone and buprenorphine, but black and “Hispanic/Latinx” patients are less likely to receive buprenorphine compared to non-Hispanic white patients, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) writes in its grant announcement. “This raises equity concerns, as buprenorphine may be safer, easier to access and less stigmatizing than methadone for many patients,” the document states. Unequal access to buprenorphine is a significant problem nationwide, the agency claims, adding that unspecified “studies” estimate that black opioid abusers are 50-60% less likely to access the treatment compared to white patients with similar disparities observed among Hispanic/Latinx patients.

The taxpayer-funded study will use data from the nation’s largest provider of substance use care as well as quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the impact on racialized disparities for black, Hispanic and Latinx patients to inform future policy and create interventions that can improve equitable care for opioid addiction. Researchers will examine how changes in receipt of MOUD and retention following COVID-19 MOUD policies differ between black and Hispanic/Latinx compared to non-Hispanic white patients with opioid use disorder. They will also consider how “community-level sequelae of structural racism” influence pre and post COVID-19 changes in treatment for the minority opioid abusers and the academics will probe addicts’ experiences while receiving care and perceptions of implementation of policies related to COVID-19 among blacks, Hispanics and Latinx opioid abusers. It is essential that the impact of disparities and mechanisms underlying disparities be understood to optimize policy changes regarding equity, the NIH writes in the grant document.

In a press release explaining that critical race theory is at the center of its study on unequal access to treatment for opioid overdoses, UW writes that the government also plays a direct role in the discrimination. As an example, the university writes that President Richard Nixon’s 1971 war on drugs differently impacted minority communities, including in ways that serve as barriers to adequate substance use treatment. “One of the key variables we are looking at is differential police presence in communities as one of the things that might modify community members’ ability to access buprenorphine versus methadone,” one of the UW researchers says in the press release. “The more that any specific behavior is criminalized, the more that we expect that people will go through the court system and a treatment pathway that involves a lot of monitoring, as methadone does. Then of course that treatment itself becomes more disruptive of the person’s life, which then has impacts for family, as well as economic and occupational opportunities.” The UW health professor leading the study, Emily Williams, says the situation provides an excellent opportunity to begin applying critical race theory. “A lot of research focuses on what is happening for minoritized groups relative to white people and then figuring out those mechanisms,” she said. “But when we center the margins, we’re caring specifically about what’s happening to these minoritized groups that are not getting what they need.”

Until Next Week…