Debt collection lawsuits have increased dramatically over the past few decades, now accounting for an estimated one in four of all civil cases. These lawsuits—which can include suits to recover student loan debt, medical debt, car loan debt, credit card debt, and more—are overwhelmingly resolved in favor of the debt collector. Debt and debt collection judgments can have severe and far-reaching consequences, including wage garnishment, bank account seizure, and inability to secure housing, employment, or medical care.
Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Scott Burris, JD •
Center for Public Health Law Research
Jonathan Larsen, JD, MPP •
Center for Public Health Law Research
Elizabeth Platt, Esq. •
Center for Public Health Law Research
This project brings together researchers from the Center for Public Health Law Research and the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, to identify a series of 84 actionable steps for government at all levels to improve and align drug policy in the United States.
The increase in serious opioid use disorder (OUD) and overdose deaths in the United States requires a response that coordinates multiple levels of government to mobilize their resources and expertise in an aligned and efficient fashion.
Coverage expansion for Medicaid improves access to care and health outcomes for people with substance use disorder (SUD). In spite of that evidence, as of May 2023, 10 states have failed to expand Medicaid funding to low-income adults as emergency enrollment protections established for COVID-19 end. This coverage gap in the non-expansion jurisdictions denies access to care to more than 1.9 million people living in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
This longitudinal dataset captures laws addressing authority to respond to public health emergencies that were enacted between May 21, 2022, and October 6, 2023, in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia.
State laws setting the scope and limits of emergency authority are crucial to an effective public health response. This suite of legal data captures details of legislation that addresses emergency health authority introduced between January 1, 2021, and May 20, 2022, in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia.
President Biden made big headlines by pardoning federal violations of simple cannabis possession, citing that “too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana." But will the decision really move the needle? Scott Burris, Professor of Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, examines the ripple effects of Biden’s announcement, and dives into the implications of how controlled substances, specifically marijuana, are scheduled by the federal government and states.
This dataset is cross-sectional and displays key features of state Medicaid Waivers addressing COVID-19 across all 50 states and the District of Columbia approved as of July 1, 2021.
As the United States marks one year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in more than 500,000 deaths so far and a historic economic recession, 50 top legal experts have convened to offer a new assessment of the U.S. policy response to the crisis in the COVID-19 Policy Playbook: Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future.
In the United States, preemption is a legal doctrine that allows upper levels of government to restrict or even prevent a lower-level government from self-regulating. While it is often thought of in the context of the federal government preventing state regulation, preemption is increasingly used as a tool by states to limit cities, counties, and other lower-level municipalities from legislating across a broad array of issues.
