Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law Alumni News • September 2019 HOUSING LAW Healing or Harming?Inside this issue HEALING OR HARMING: Read about how housing laws can affect public health. Learn how Temple Law’s Center for Public Health Law Research has spent a decade collecting and sharing data from the intersection of public health and the law. 2 TEMPLE ESQ. is published by the Temple University Beasley School of Law for alumni and friends. Gregory N. Mandel, Dean Publication Director: Janet Goldwater Art Director: Gene Gilroy Photography: Kelly & Massa, Ryan Brandenberg, Alexandria Peachey Contributor: Rebecca Schatschneider Send letters and comments to: janet.goldwater@temple.edu Temple Esq., James E. Beasley School of Law, 1719 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122 To change your email, home or office address: lawalum@temple.edu or 215.204.1187 Board of Visitors Joseph W. Anthony ’74 Dennis Arouca ’77 Leonard Barrack ’68 (Chair) Hon. Phyllis W. Beck ’67 Mitchell W. Berger ’80 James A. Bruton, III ’75 Meyer A. Bushman ’56 Anthony W. Clark ’79 Richard T. Collier ’79 Doreen S. Davis ’78 Hon. Theodore Z. Davis ’63 Carla Dowben ’55 Alan M. Feldman ’76 Allan M. Fox ’72 Carol L. Hartz ’94 Frederick S. Humphries ’86 Hayes Hunt ’97 Richard P. Jaff e ’68 Marina Kats ’88 Leonard M. Klehr ’76 Susanna Lachs ’78 John B. Langel ’74 Carolyn C. Lindheim ’87 TEMPLE Bennett P. Lomax ’03 Bruce I. MacPhail ’75 Vincent J. Marella ’72 Hon. Theodore McKee William R. McLucas ’75 Leslie Anne Miller ’94 Mitchell L. Morgan ’80 Stephen J. Neuberger ’03 Hon. William T. Nicholas ’64 Grant Rawdin ‘87 Abraham C. Reich ’74 Joel E. Rome ’62 Gilbert T. Schwartz ’74 Alan H. Silverstein ’75 Hon. Anthony J. Scirica Hon. Martin J. Silverstein ’79 James T. Smith ’83 Gene Spector ’70 Joe H. Tucker, Jr. ’89 James A. Walden ’91 Richard H. Walker ’75 Bette Jean Walters ’70 Anne Nadol, Ex-Offi cio Temple Law’s 10-Q Prof. Tom Lin writes about the new corporate social activism. Faculty news and recent law school news Prof. Ellie Margolis shares top ten tips for improving your legal writing. This issue’s alumni profile features Nadeem Bezar ’91. Making a Difference 2019 grads and a third-year student address critical social justice issues. Class Notes Recent alumni news plus photos of alumni gatherings, including Law Day and the Conwell Society reception. Commencement 2019: Speaker Emily Bazelon calls for reform in criminal justice system. 9 10 14 13 16 18 26A message from Dean Gregory Mandel Gregory Mandel, Dean As I write this, we have just welcomed the entering class of 2019—an exceptionally bright, diverse group whose backgrounds are as varied as their reasons for pursuing a law degree. We have also welcomed, over the summer months, an extraordinary cohort of new and visiting faculty with expertise that spans the legal spectrum: Shanda Sibley, who will run a new Social Justice Lawyering clinic at the Sheller Center for Social Justice; Stephanie Didwania, who brings an empirical focus to both criminal procedure and intellectual property law; Andrew Weiner, who after a decade at the DOJ will lead the LL.M. in Tax program; Michelle Cosby, our new Director of the Law Library; and Robert Tsai, a nationally acclaimed constitutional law professor, who visits us this year as the Cliff ord Scott Green Chair in Constitutional Law. Each of them is poised to make signifi cant contributions to an already outstanding faculty, many of whom are also pioneers and leading thinkers in their fi elds. Professor Tom Lin, whose work gave rise to the notion of “cyborg fi nance,” explores the perils and possibilities inherent in what he calls “corporate social activism” in new work presented by the Temple 10-Q (p. 9). Professor Ellie Margolis, a nationally recognized fi gure in legal research and writing, advocates persuasively against legal jargon and for greater clarity in legal writing (p. 13). And Professor Scott Burris, one of the co-founders of legal epidemiology, is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Center for Public Health Law Research by continuing to lead that fi eld in new directions (p. 6). We are also extraordinarily proud of our many graduates whose work and leadership pushes the law in new directions, often toward greater human freedom. I have been particularly inspired by the work of Nadeem Bezar ‘91, who transitioned from a highly successful medical malpractice career to become an advocate for the victims and survivors of human traffi cking (p. 14). An institution is only as strong as the commitment and leadership of its people, and I am proud to report that Temple Law School is exceptionally strong. Thank you for all you do to ensure that our beloved institution continues to fl ourish and to push the law in new directions. Yours,2 • TEMPLE ESQ. SEPTEMBER 2019 Housing laws and some unintended consequences Research shows that where you live can infl uence both how long and how healthy your life will be. Someone living in a ZIP code near Temple’s campus in North Philadelphia can expect to live to 71. Living only a mile and a half away, close to the art museum, may buy you fi ve additional years, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s calculations. North Philadelphia residents face overcrowding, poor quality education, discrimination, violence, racism, drugs, and food deserts. Housing is an umbrella for many of those issues, since your dwelling and your neighborhood will determine so much about your vulnerability—or immunity— to health threats. Healthy, safe, aff ordable and stable housing, and the laws that govern housing conditions, have obvious and extensive implications for health and life expectancy. Laws and policies are one mechanism public health offi cials can employ to improve health, well-being, and equity. Unfortunately, some housing laws— in this case nuisance property laws—enacted with avowed good intentions, can have unintended consequences. How one well-intentioned law backfi red In the U.S., an average of 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. This amounts to more than 12 million victims over the course of a year, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. For many of the victims, a call to 911 is their only lifeline. That call had unexpected consequences for Norristown, PA, resident Lakisha Briggs. In 2012, when Briggs called the police because her boyfriend was beating her, the responding offi cer off ered to help but warned her that if she kept calling, the police would have to tell the landlord to evict her. A few weeks later, when her 37 of the 40 most populous U.S. cities have ordinances governing nuisance properties. Using an interactive map like this one, found on the Center for Public Health Law Research’s LawAtlas.org website, visitors can fi nd detailed information about each city’s nuisance ordinance, and a variety of other public health-focused laws. Housing Law Healing or Harming? on following pagecontinued on following page TEMPLE ESQ. SEPTEMBER 2019 • 3 abuser returned and beat and stabbed her in the neck, she was so afraid that she crawled out into the street instead of calling 911. A neighbor, however, did call 911. Briggs was airlifted to a hospital and survived. The day after she returned from the hospital, her landlord evicted her. Briggs was a casualty of a provision of a nuisance property law, or “crime-free” ordinance, which require landlords to regulate the conduct of their tenants, sometimes through eviction, and often penalize the landlords when they fail to do so. Although these laws were initially enacted beginning in the late 1980s to target drug use, many ordinances now include a wide range of actions that the city deems to be a nuisance. The Norristown ordinance included language that would mark a property as a “nuisance” if the police were called to that property three times in four months for “disorderly behavior,” including calls for protection from domestic violence. To resolve the designation as a nuisance, Norristown was permitted to revoke a landlord’s rental license, which could result in landlords evicting the residents involved in disturbances. Such laws, which may force tenants to choose between calling the police in an emergency and being threatened with eviction, can have a disproportionate eff ect on domestic violence survivors—or people with disabilities—who may have to call the police for help more often than others. Temple Law’s Center identifi es harmful laws In 2016, sociologist Matthew Desmond’s bestselling book, Evicted, fi rst brought the crisis of housing instability to the attention of a broad audience. The pandemic of evictions nationwide described in Desmond’s book are the result of multiple and overlapping factors. Nuisance property ordinances are among those causes; from Lakisha Briggs’ hometown of Norristown to Milwaukee (where Desmond and his colleague Nicol Valdez centered their research) these ordinances were having severe unintended consequences for victims of domestic violence. At Temple Law, the Center for Public Health Law Research (CPHLR) strives to understand the impact of laws on the public’s health, and identify those laws that may be causing harm. In recent years, the Center has focused its attention on housing laws. CPHLR researchers teamed up to amass data on nuisance ordinances in cities across the U.S. A resulting paper, “Public Health Implications of Housing Laws: Nuisance Evictions,” by Scott Burris, Professor of Law and CPHLR Director, and researchers Katie Moran-McCabe ’08 and Abraham Gutman describes the ordinances’ role in the “legal ecology of eviction”: . . eviction, broadly defi ned to include informal evictions and other forms of dispossession, is much more common than had been appreciated . . . nuisance property ordinances may be particularly problematic. Research by Desmond and Valdez in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, showed that during 2008-2009, about 1 in 3 nuisance citations were for incidents of domestic violence. An American Civil Liberties Union report tracking nuisance citations in Binghamton and Fulton, New York, found that “domestic violence was the single largest category of enforcement” of both cities’ ordinances. One national poverty law organization estimated that more than 2000 municipalities had nuisance property ordinances of some kind as of 2017…* In Milwaukee, a 2004 internal investigation found that the city’s ordinance had been partially successful in abating the cited nuisances, but the study failed to investigate how landlords were abating those nuisances. The study neglected to measure any eff ect of the nuisance ordinance on legitimate help-seekers— individuals like Norristown’s Lakisha Briggs. ‘A law is like a drug: let’s test it to see if it works’ “There is the intention of the law, and then there is the eff ect,” says Burris. “The eff ect can only be assessed over time, as we see how that law and its enforcement interacts with social and economic realities on the ground.” Because of CPHLR’s holistic approach to public health, their interest in housing law has gone well beyond the obvious health risks posed by factors such as access to heat and safe water, or the presence of lead or asbestos. They are working with a defi nition of public health that includes all factors that aff ect health, both physical and mental. “Everybody who deals with law understands that it’s not enough to have the words. Nobody passed nuisance property laws to infl ict violence on women, but we have to have our eyes open if that’s the result,” says Burris. “The law has to do the things you want it to do—which means you have to evaluate it after it’s passed. A law is like a drug, let’s test it to see if it works. And don’t forget the side eff ects.” How to ‘measure’ the law In a scientifi c legal research process they call policy surveillance, researchers at Temple Law’s CPHLR compile datasets, converting the provisions of laws into numerical data. This “legal mapping Health law professor Scott Burris * “Public Health Implications of Housing Laws: Nuisance Evictions” by Katie Moran-McCabe ’08, Abraham Gutman, and Professor Scott Burris. Public Health Reports (Sage Journals) 20184 • TEMPLE ESQ. SEPTEMBER 2019 Housing Law, continued from page three process” is essentially content analysis of the law—it establishes a nuanced and granular look at what the laws actually say and where, and in many cases, how they have changed over time. These data are used in evaluation to understand the impact of laws on health outcomes, or in practice by lawyers, advocates, policymakers, the media, and others. Housing laws are just one of two dozen hot- button topics they are examining—from environmental laws, to food safety laws, injury prevention, and laws that control or regulate alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. CPHLR has recently built an extensive suite of datasets on laws governing reproductive health and sexuality. All told, they’ve published more than 100 legal datasets to a website they run for the purpose of sharing those data, LawAtlas.org. In their article, “Public Health Implications of Housing Laws: Nuisance Evictions,” authors Moran-McCabe, Gutman, and Burris explain the value of compiling accurate datasets, and how they can be applied to advance the role of laws in improving public health: The fi rst step in evaluating the possible eff ects of a law is often simply to “measure” the law. By measurement, we mean using explicit, scientifi c methods to create a dataset of the observable elements of the law across jurisdictions. Such a dataset allows researchers to investigate the eff ects of laws, or specifi c elements of laws, on important health and social outcomes, and to identify those provisions that create the risk of unintended and undesirable consequences. With this research in mind, we built a dataset of nuisance eviction ordinances in the 40 most populous US cities. We then determined how many cities had provisions that might allow victims of domestic violence to be evicted for seeking help from emergency services. As of August 1, 2017, all but 3 of the 40 cities (El Paso, Texas; Austin, Texas; and Memphis, Tennessee) had a nuisance property ordinance. Only 5 cities (Albuquerque, New Mexico; Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Fresno, California; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin) explicitly counted 911 calls as nuisances, but in most of them, nuisance categories could easily include a tenant experiencing domestic violence. Twenty-eight cities classifi ed a disturbance or disorderly conduct complaint as a nuisance, and 17 included some type of violence. Only 6 cities explicitly exempted domestic violence-related incidents (Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Fresno, California; Houston, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which amended its ordinance in 2011). In 30 of the 40 cities, no conduct was exempt from the law. Authors Burris and Moran-McCabe go on to draw some conclusions that could infl uence policymakers: Finding so many places where the law seemed to allow domestic violence victims to be evicted for seeking help led us to consider the possibility that other laws might provide countervailing protection. The relationship of landlords and tenants is governed by local law and state law, so we looked next to the state-level datasets we built on landlord-tenant and fair-housing law. Ideally, these laws would protect—or at least not make life harder for—victims of domestic violence, but the laws as written raise some concern. Only 15 states, Washington, DC, and half of the large cities we examined gave tenants the right to change their locks after a domestic violence incident. Only 24 states, Washington, DC, and 29 of the largest cities allowed tenants fl eeing an abuser to terminate their lease early without penalty. Domestic violence survivors in 23 states and 10 of the largest cities had neither option. CPHLR housing law researcher Katie Moran-McCabe ’08 is the award-winning co-author of “Public Health Implications of Housing Laws: Nuisance Evictions.” ” “ TEMPLE ESQ. SEPTEMBER 2019 • 5 At Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, Grace Osa-Edoh ’16 is charged with addressing issues of housing habitability. Her practice is based at CLS’s medical-legal partnership at Karabots Pediatric Care Center, a clinic run by Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania. Medical-legal partnerships, like this one in West Philadelphia, have been shown to have positive outcomes, providing low- income families one-stop shopping to address multiple, interrelated issues. “Access to safe, stable housing and quality education are two of the biggest determinants of positive outcomes for kids,” says Osa-Edoh, who previously worked at a fi rm where she represented students with special needs whose educational institutions were not providing appropriate accommodations and educational plans. At the neighborhood clinic where she practices, Osa-Edoh educates and represents families who have come to the clinic with health problems, but may also have problems that would benefi t from legal advice. She says families often don’t know their rights when it comes to accessing health insurance or nutrition assistance, or confronting landlords about health hazards. How Philadelphia’s lead paint law had an unexpected outcome Osa-Edoh advocates for her clients in many ways. It is well known that lead exposure causes long-term harm in adults, and that children under six are particularly vulnerable to the adverse health eff ects from chipped lead paint. What is less well known is how, in Philadelphia, the very law that was intended to remediate the problem can work to disadvantage a vulnerable population. In 2011, Philadelphia enacted the Lead Paint Disclosure Ordinance, requiring landlords of properties built before 1978 to test their properties for lead before renting to a family with children under age six, and Tackling housing problems in Philadelphia Grace Osa-Edoh ’16 provide a certifi cate to the family confi rming that the property was “lead safe.” Osa-Edoh explains that although this was an important step in the right direction for Philadelphia, the ordinance governing lead has fallen short of its goal of protecting the public health, saying: “The unfortunate result of this age prerequisite is that landlords are then incentivized to discriminate against families with young children, in violation of Philadelphia’s anti- discrimination ordinance.” While it is illegal for landlords to discriminate against families based on familial status in Philadelphia, the lead paint ordinance has still had the eff ect of tightening the Philadelphia housing market for people—families with young children— who are often already struggling to fi nd aff ordable housing. “CLS has been advocating for a restructuring [of the lead paint ordinance] that removes this incentive for landlords to discriminate,” says Osa-Edoh. “We’re working to help City Council pass an ordinance that will ban renting a property to anyone, unless it has been declared lead-free or lead-safe.” A person who has been evicted for calling 911 or who breaks a lease to fl ee an abuser sooner or later will be renting again, or trying to rent again. Fair- housing law is intended to protect vulnerable people from unjust discrimination. However, only 3 of the 40 largest US cities are in the 3 states (Illinois, Washington, DC, and Rhode Island) whose fair-housing law defi ned victims of domestic violence as a protected class. In every other city, landlords could legally deny a lease for a history of an eviction or broken lease caused entirely by domestic violence. ‘When laws don’t work, we should get rid of them’ In Norristown, at least in theory, tenants no longer have to choose between eviction and calling 911. Following Briggs’ traumatic experience, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia law fi rm of Pepper Hamilton fi led a federal lawsuit challenging the city’s ordinance, claiming it punished innocent tenants and their landlords for requesting police assistance. As a result, in 2014, Norristown voted to repeal its ordinance and agreed to pay both attorneys’ fees and damages to Briggs to settle the case. “We can’t test a law in advance, so we need to do it continuously once it’s enacted. Nuisance property laws, concussion laws, syringe exchange laws, all of these have profound implications for people and their health,” says Burris. “The NIH, the CDC, and governments at all levels should be seeing if the laws they implement harm health, and when they don’t work, we should get rid of them. We can’t let failures become the default situation.”6 • TEMPLE ESQ. SEPTEMBER 2019 SEPTEMBER 13, 2019 Temple Law’s Center for Public Health Law Research’s (CPHLR) innovative work in legal epidemiology, scientifi c legal mapping, and policy surveillance was the subject of a symposium to mark the Center’s 10th anniversary in 2019. At the one-day symposium at Temple Law, prominent legal scholars and legal epidemiologists discussed four of the many topics that have been the focus of the Center’s work: reproductive rights, the pharmaceutical industry and the opioid crisis, city-level health policy, and the social determinants of health. Speakers also explored the role of legal epidemiology in law reform, both for laws on the books and policies on the horizon. CPHLR was founded in 2009 by Professor Scott Burris and now works through partnerships with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, Pew Charitable Trusts, and others. The Center’s vast collection of evidence explores a wide range of laws related to housing, economic security and equity, reproductive rights, violence and injury prevention, and infectious diseases, to name a few. Government and regulatory institutions, researchers, advocates, and news media rely on the Center’s legal data, evaluation study results, and novel methodologies for their work. A decade of innovation in legal epidemiology Some definitions Legal mapping is a set of techniques used to capture important features of laws and policies, and identify how they vary across jurisdictions or institutions, and over time. Legal mapping takes many forms. It can be conducted using transparent scientifi c methods for empirical research in legal epidemiology, or it can rely on conventional legal research methods to answer important questions in public health law practice. Legal epidemiology is the scientifi c study of law as a factor in the cause, distribution, and prevention of disease and injury in a population. Policy surveillance is a type of legal mapping. It is the systematic, scientifi c collection and analysis of laws of public health signifi cance. POLICY SURVEILLANCE DATA found on LawAtlas.org have been cited in scholarly publications nearly times since 2014 100 TEXTBOOKS 2 research study results, legal data, and other evidence-based materials. 300 THE CPHLR EVIDENCE LIBRARY houses nearly Lindsay K. Cloud is director of CPHLR’s Policy Surveillance Program TEMPLE ESQ. SEPTEMBER 2019 • 7 Center has grown rapidly in the decade since it was founded Today, under the leadership of co-directors Scott Burris and Heidi Grunwald, Ph.D., the Center boasts 14 full-time staff members, fi ve student interns, and fi ve research fellows. The CPHLR staff includes three Temple Law alumni: Katie Moran-McCabe ’08, an award-winning housing law researcher, Adrienne Ghorashi ’14, who primarily conducts research in reproductive rights, and Amy Cook ‘07, a law and policy analyst who works on a variety of projects in the Policy Surveillance Program. In summer 2019, CPHLR’s new fellowship program welcomed three scholars from across the country. Partnering with the Center, the fellows are examining city-level eviction laws, reproductive rights, medical-legal partnerships, and laws related to the opioid epidemic and access to treatment. At CPHLR’s 2019 Summer Institute, 67 researchers from 25 states and two Canadian provinces gathered in Philadelphia to get hands-on training in policy surveillance. Through programs including the annual Summer Institute, CPHLR has trained nearly 1,000 U.S. and international professionals in legal epidemiology and policy surveillance methods, and off ers the fi rst certifi cate program for public health law research. Watch for a special symposium edition of the Temple Law Review in February 2020. JUNE 6, 2019 67 researchers from 25 states and two Canadian provinces convened for CPHLR’s Policy Surveillance Summer Institute. The Center has trained nearly 1,000 professionals from around the world in legal epidemiology and policy surveillance methods since 2017. Adrienne Ghorashi ’14 (left) and student intern Allison Goldberg ’21 join a growing team of researchers at CPHLR. Monthly average number of users of LawAtlas.org 6,000 There are more than 100 LEGAL DATASETS available for free and open use on LawAtlas.org. Rachel Rebouché, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research, is a faculty fellow at CPHLR, working on the Center’s reproductive health policy work. “Abortion care is an important part of women’s reproductive health, though it is often treated as a contraband service under the law,” says Rebouché. CPHLR’s extensive mapping of the country’s many legal restrictions on abortion can help legal researchers understand abortion law’s relationship to health outcomes.Next >