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Students Refunded $99 Fee That Professor Sent To Planned Parenthood
A federal judge dismissed a 2023 lawsuit alleging a Michigan State University professor forced students to pay fees she bragged on Facebook went “100%” to Planned Parenthood.
The plaintiffs, Nathan Barbieri and Nolan Radomski, alleged then-marketing professor Amy Wisner compelled her 600 students to pay a $99 membership fee to join “The Rebellion Community,” which the judge described as “an online global learning platform” Wisner controlled and operated.
U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney ruled that Barbieri and Radomski lack standing because they have “not adequately alleged a current or future injury against” Wisner, who was placed on leave when the interim dean of the College of Business learned about the $99 fee, which was refunded to students.
“Plaintiffs do not allege that there will be another course with similar requirements or that plaintiffs would be required to enroll in such a course,” Maloney’s 20-page order reads. “So plaintiffs’ theory that they will be exposed to similar harms is far too speculative to warrant prospective relief. …
“Because MSU refunded plaintiffs’ money, the connection between Wisner’s current or future advocacy and plaintiffs have been severed,” the judge noted, adding that even if the plaintiffs had standing, the Eleventh Amendment protects the defendants in their official capacities.
The plaintiffs claimed the fees were donated to political advocacy groups, like Planned Parenthood, which is antithetical to their religious beliefs.
While the interim dean of the College of Business gave the students a $99 credit to their MSU account, Barbieri and Radomski said that wasn’t enough because the university’s code of conduct allowed Wisner’s conduct.
EGLE Could Deny Permits Based On Area’s Air Quality Under Bill
House and Senate bills introduced today with the backing of environmental activists would let the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) deny permits based on total air quality, not individual building pollution.
Sen. Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit) and Rep. Donavan McKinney (D-Detroit) introduced SB 479 and HB 4742 , which they called Protecting Overburdened Communities Act, or POCA, during a press conference with several environmental advocacy groups. They would require EGLE to deny permits if nearby neighborhoods are exposed to multiple sources of air pollution, including diesel trucks.
“EGLE’s permitting process is flawed. EGLE currently reviews each company’s individual chemical emissions and new sources of pollution separately, not all at once. This day is welcome. It’s a long time coming,” said Theresa Landrum, a southwest Detroit resident.
Landrum said Detroit residents and other overburdened communities need help in dealing with increasingly worse air quality around the neighborhoods around industrial areas. Residents are pointing to increased rates of asthma, COPD, cancer, and other lung diseases linked to poor air quality.
“We have to look at all these chemicals and all these dangerous polluting industries from a holistic level,” Landrum said.
South Detroit Environmental Vision Director Raquel Garcia, a member of the Trucks Off Our Streets coalition, said the diesel emissions from the 10,000 trucks that crossed the Ambassador Bridge every day were going to be doubled by the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, along with the 50 large industrial businesses between Detroit and Wyandotte.
Garcia said the health problems cropping up in Wayne County were a result of those pollutants. There could end up being even more and no community discussion would take place about those industries moving in.
“They’re not doing anything illegal, and that’s the problem. Because of weak zoning,” she said.
She said the bills introduced by McKinney and Chang would help keep concentrations from becoming another medical statistic in a polluted city. She pointed to a friend who had been talking about the damage from silica rock dust in the area from a nearby industry.
“Imagine ringing a bell that nobody hears. Imagine talking about this and nobody’s listening, and now you’ve got a spot on your lung,” she said.
Chang said she had been working on this since she first got to the Legislature and had tried to pass several other air quality bills through Congress with the help of Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) and former Rep. Abraham Aiyash, among other efforts.
McKinney said the bills wouldn’t shut off any part of the state to future development, but instead allow EGLE to “hold polluters accountable.”
“They don’t have any state statute on the books that allows them to say, ‘Hey,’ deny a permit based off of the accumulative impacts of toxics,” McKinney said.
He said it was a matter of doing a better job of containing and preventing air pollution from getting out of the buildings they are in. If they didn’t want to do that, they should be held accountable.
“Essential businesses” would have carve-outs in the bills and McKinney said he’s “still in negotiations” with EGLE to define “essential business.”
He also said his legislation would let EGLE stop industries that end up polluting, just because they can afford to pay the fine as a cost of doing business.
“So it’s a slap on the wrist in terms of fines and fees associated with that, and this bill essentially puts a lot of teeth and a lot of weight behind those fines and fees,” he said.
He said there would be grandfather clauses for any business that currently had an EGLE permit already.
When asked if it would have an impact on the areas that were already polluted, Landrum said as industry moves toward clean energy production, those grandfathered permits would get cycled out.
When asked if it would do anything for current pollution, Landrum said, “It’s my hope that it would.”
Report On Psychiatric Bed Shortage To Come
In a House committee’s final hearing on the psychiatric bed shortage, Chair Matthew Bierlein (R-Vassar) said the House Oversight Subcommittee on Public Health and Food Security will be compiling a comprehensive report on what they’ve learned and will be recommending legislation based on that.
Bierlein said his office fully intends to continue meeting and collaborating to produce a report based on committee testimony and turn that into legislative recommendations.
One such suggestion would be to invest money in psychiatric beds to reduce the strain on jails, emergency rooms and local law enforcement, which is caused by only 32 adult inpatient psychiatric beds available north of Grand Rapids.
Antonietta (Toni) Petrella-Stanfield, co-founder of Before, During and After Incarceration, said her son died by suicide six years ago after 15 years of struggling to manage a bipolar diagnosis, during which he was hospitalized 15 times for a total of 40 days. He was arrested five times during psychotic episodes for a total of 480 days in jail.
Stanfield said this places a disproportionate burden on county jails.
“Jails are not hospitals. And correctional staff are not mental health clinicians,” Steinfield said.
Forty percent of the Grand Traverse jail population is prescribed psychotropic medication, Steinfield cited, which she said shows the level of unmet need.
“Our jails have become the de facto psychiatric holding facilities, a role that they were never designed or trained to fulfill. We must ask, is this the best we can offer our family members who suffer from a mental illness?” Stanfield said.
Proper inpatient care can interrupt the cycle of arrest, incarceration and release that people with untreated mental illness face.
In addition to funding psychiatric care, Stanfield recommended the development of collaborative models between mental health agencies and jails to connect those in crisis to mental health professionals rather than incarceration, and explore pilot programs that bring stabilization units adjacent to correctional facilities.
“Every individual with a mental illness deserves access to appropriate care, not a jail cell. Every correctional officer deserves to work in an environment that does not require them to act as the de facto psychiatric nurse, and every county deserves the resources to meet its legally mandated mental health responsibilities,” Stanfield said.
Health Official Defends Not Investigating SIDS Cases
A state official who oversees the investigation of child deaths told a House committee today that his unit doesn’t look into sudden infant death cases – as was suggested by the Auditor General – because there’s little to be gained by it.
The House Child Welfare Oversight Committee questioned the head of children’s welfare about an audit from April that found 135 children’s deaths were not properly evaluated.
But Children’s Service Administration Senior Deputy Director Demetrius Starling said the Office of Family Advocate did not investigate 150 child deaths in the Michigan Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System between Jan. 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, because the coroner didn’t find the child was abused or neglected.
“We, unfortunately, in Michigan, have a lot of positional facilitation deaths – safe sleep – and as a result of those complaints being investigated by either or in tandem with law enforcement and also getting the medical report from the coroner’s office, is not deemed child abuse or neglect. These are unfortunate and traumatic incidents that happen at way too high of a rate,” Starling said.
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development defines these cases as Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths (SUIDs), which includes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed, and unknown causes.
Starling said the cases aren’t investigated because they had already been determined through a law enforcement investigation and child protective services.
He said it isn’t worth retraumatizing the parents for a third time for an investigation by the Office of Family Advocate, which he said is separate from Child Protective Services.
“There isn’t a lot that you can glean from reviewing all safe sleep deaths. These are very unfortunate, traumatic situations that occur,” he said.