As a second Trump administration approaches, we’re running out of time to confirm as many federal judges as possible to provide a check on his presidential power and curb his stated policy priorities.
There are 42 federal judicial vacancies and 13 nominations before the Senate right now—as our civil rights hang in the balance, take action now!
On November 9, 2023, the National Women’s Law Center joined the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the National Health Law Program in an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Lacks v. Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical, Inc. Our brief supports the Lacks family’s claim of unjust enrichment against Ultragenyx, a multi-billion-dollar biopharmaceutical corporation that profits from sales of products derived from the “HeLa” cells that were originally non-consensually and non-therapeutically harvested by white doctors at John Hopkins Hospital from Mrs. Henrietta Lacks’s cervix in the 1950’s. Our brief places Ultragenyx’s actions within the disturbing history of systemic medical exploitation and disregard of the informed-consent rights of poor, Black, and Indigenous people and argues that Ultragenyx’s continued profit from Mrs. Lacks’ exploitation perpetuates that harm.
