Profs. Jane Kirtley and Ilan Wurman Quoted in Minnesota Daily About Recent Executive Orders

Professors Jane Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law, and Ilan Wurman, Julius E. Davis Professor of Law, were quoted in the Minnesota Daily about how Donald Trump’s action could fundamentally change courts’ interpretation of the Constitution. An executive order has forced the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to remove pages from their website relating to sexual health awareness and vaccinations. Prof. Kirtley said the decision to take some of these pages down is extremely worrying for both the public and media professionals. She said, “The idea that this kind of information that has been freely available to the public no longer will be is concerning to me, for the public as a whole, but certainly for journalists as well. It makes their ability to report much more difficult.” Prof. Kirtley said the takedown of these CDC pages in particular is especially worrying as the information belongs to the public. “I get very concerned when the government is basically directing these agencies to stop making information available to the public. That information belongs to the public, it does not belong to those agencies.” Regarding an executive order that challenges the Fourteenth Amendment that children born in the United States are automatically granted citizenship, Prof. Wurman said the Supreme Court has never addressed the question. He said, “They have the executive order with respect to birthright citizenship, which is clearly an attempt to get the Supreme Court to weigh in on the meaning of the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendmen.”