Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in the American Public Health Association's Public News Wire, in “How to Defend Public Health at This Critical Moment,” by Mary Stortstrom.
Following is an excerpt:
… Panelist Richard Hughes, a law partner at Epstein Becker Green in Washington, D.C., said federal health statutes have been set up to give the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “a tremendous amount of authority,” particularly when it comes to setting vaccine policy.
“We have seen a steady stream of what I would say are unlawful actions that undermine the Administrative Procedure Act,” Hughes said. “It is possible to challenge the secretary in court. As a vaccine policy lawyer, this was the last place that I really wanted to be talking about using the courts as the check on our nation’s key health codes, but we had to do it in the NIH grants case, which thankfully, APHA took the leadership role on.”
Hughes also discussed the Supreme Court case surrounding the Chevron deference, saying he’s concerned about how that decision will affect the role of experts in public health authorities and that the courts are decreasing deference to subject matter experts.
Traditionally, lawyers deferred to experts within agencies if there was any ambiguity in the law, and they were allowed to make an interpretation of that. In overturning Chevron, the Supreme Court took over the authority to make those decisions.
“At the end of the day, we saved the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, but we have compromised the role of experts, and I’m really concerned that the Supreme Court will continue to erode the role of experts in our society, especially when it comes to public health policymaking,” Hughes said. …
