Blog | Richard Jaffe, Esq.

Will Your Child’s Cali. Medical Exemption Be Good When Schools Reopen in the Fall?

May 5, 2020 Richard Jaffe Comments 5 comments

I have been getting that question a lot lately. It is understandable with all that is going on. The answer is that I don’t know and I don’t think anyone can know for three reasons. First, Senator Pan had to give-up some important ground at the end of the last session, via SB 714 which watered down some of SB 276’s more onerous provisions. The biggest problem (from the regulators’ point of view) with the current SB276/714 law is that…

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More on what governments can get away with in these COVID-19 times

April 30, 2020 Richard Jaffe Comments 0 Comment

Some of my FB friends have asked me to write something about the spate of government orders about social distancing, closures of state parks and beaches, constitutional rights to congregate and associate in public, requiring masks when in stores, and mandatory testing (which I will deal with another time). A few of these issues are simple, but most are not. Whatever else, this pandemic has certainly provided a real-time lesson on federalism, the essence of which is a shared/sometimes overlapping…

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What Could Be Next in the California Legislative Vaccine Front

April 17, 2020 Richard Jaffe Comments 0 Comment

Supposedly, the legislative session is going to restart on May 4th. But whenever it continues, I would expect Senator Pan and his allies to clean-up and fix the slippage which resulted from SB 714’s amendment of SB 276, and to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there is not a vaccine for the disease right now, there surely will be, in a year to eighteen months as is the general (possibly) optimistic estimate, or maybe even sooner. Because it…

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Some perspective on President Trump’s call for off-label use of Hydroxychloroquine

April 13, 2020 Richard Jaffe Comments 6 comments

The President is getting a lot of flak for basically telling COVID-19 patients to try Hydroxychloroquine or as he has put it, “What do you have to lose.” The criticism from the medical establishment is that the drug is not proven safe or effective for COVID-19. That is true, but it’s not the whole story. Most people are or have recently become familiar with the concept of “off label” use, but I suspect few really understand some important aspects of…

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To all you Yahoos who think you have a constitutional right to congregate during a pandemic

March 30, 2020 Richard Jaffe Comments 2 comments

The short of it is that you don’t. For at least the last few hundred years, the law has recognized the government’s responsibility to protect the public health via its police powers. That job primarily falls to the states under the 10th Amendment, which provides that all powers not expressly granted to the federal government resides in the states. There are many cases where state and the federal government have been allowed to lock-up people considered dangerous to the health,…

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How far can the government go to restrict your movement and the first (idiotic) test case is filed

March 22, 2020 Richard Jaffe Comments 1 comment

People want to know how much can the government really restrict their movements. Can the government really stop healthy people from congregating? I think the short answer to both is yes, at least in the short term, and at least until some court says otherwise, and for reasons I will discuss, I do not see a court overturning a government shelter-in-place order anytime soon. (Ok, maybe that wasn’t such a short answer.) There are both federal and state law issues…

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Being prepared for Government overreach and medical mandates in times like these

March 21, 2020 Richard Jaffe Comments 0 Comment

I received the following email, and I thought it was worth responding to in a post. “I hope you and yours are well and staying safe from the viral insanity. I wonder if you have any advice on being prepared for overreach and medical mandates in times like these? I like to have at least a flexible plan. I just finished reading Suzanne Somers’ “Knockout”, and watching Real Stories’ coverage on Stanislaw Burzynski… my cousin is currently seeing Dr Burzynski…

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