Policy Area

By 2022, every hospital emergency room in Illinois must have staff that can provide specialized care to victims of sexual assault. This new requirement is the result of HB 5245, a bill passed unanimously by the General Assembly and signed into law this summer. Under the law, a trained provider will have to be present in the emergency room within 90 minutes of the patient arriving in the hospital. According to the Illinois attorney general’s office, few hospitals currently provide specialized care for sexual assault victims.

It is too common a story line in farm country: The parents pass away, and the entire farm has to be sold to resolve inheritance disputes. In many states, when heirs can’t agree on how to split the property, one common option for a judge is to order a “partition by sale,” with the money then proportionally divided among them. 

But what if one of the family members would like to continue farming the land?

“Partition by sale” doesn’t account for this desire among some heirs — a concern that led Iowa legislators to pass SF 2175 this year. “It is a bill to save family farms,” Rep. Lee Hein says of the new law, which took effect in July.

Oct. 1 marks the start of the National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). The U.S. Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment Policy began celebrating NDEAM in 1945. People with disabilities continually face unemployment rates much higher than the national average. Each year, October is designated to highlight the importance of developing an inclusive workforce of individuals with a variety of abilities.

In today’s data-driven environment, nearly every program and initiative is analyzed to determine its effectiveness and overall return on investment. In September, the State International Development Organizations, or SIDO, an affiliate of The Council of State Governments, issued a report on performance metrics for international trade programs.

“This best practice report will help federal and state policymakers better understand the role of state international trade programs and how to measure them,” David Mathe, export director for the state of Delaware and SIDO president, wrote in the report’s foreword.

The Council of State Governments, in partnership with the National Conference of State Legislators, or NCSL, and the State Exchange on Employment and Disability, or SEED, provided technical assistance to Oregon’s House Workgroup on Workforce Development for People with Disabilities. The workgroup is made up of representatives from Oregon’s House Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee chaired by Rep. Jeff Reardon. Other members include Rep. Gene Whisnant, the vice chair, and Rep. Janeen Sollman.

The Twenty-First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is famous because it repealed prohibition. The second section, which prohibits the transportation or importation of alcohol into a state in violation of state law, is less well-known. Despite this section’s broad language and the Supreme Court’s repeated affirmation that the states’ three-tier system of regulating alcohol (manufacturers sell to wholesalers; wholesalers sell to retailers; retailers to consumers) is constitutional, the Supreme Court has limited states’ ability to regulate the distribution of alcohol.

The question the Supreme Court will decide in Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association v. Byrd is whether Tennessee’s law requiring alcohol retailers to live in the state for two years to receive a license violates the Constitution’s dormant Commerce Clause. The dormant Commerce Clause prevents states from “discriminat[ing] against interstate commerce” or “favor[ing] in-state economic interests over out-of-state interests.”

According to Tennessee Wine & Spirits “[a]t least twenty-one States impose some form of durational-residency requirement for liquor retailers or wholesalers. And many States impose other residency-based requirements on those entities.”