Seema Mohapatra
Associate Professor of Law and Dean's FellowLaw, Structural Racism, and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Professor Mohapatra is an expert in biotechnology and the law, public health law, reproductive justice, and health equity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has written about various issues including structural racism, mask mandates and racial discrimination, mask mandates and disability law, immunity passports, advance directives, health justice, and online teaching. Her co-authored piece with Professor Ruqaiijah Yearby, Law, Structural Racism, and the COVID-19 Pandemic, published in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, explains how systemic barriers in housing, employment, and health care caused Black, Latinx, and Native Americans to bear the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another co-authored piece with Professor Yearby that was published in the Health Affairs Blog, Structural Discrimination In COVID-19 Workplace Protections, focused on how low wage workers, such as meatpacking industry workers and home care workers, have been harmed by structural discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also has forthcoming articles on the COVID-19 pandemic and reproductive justice, health justice, and ethics of clinical trials. Professor Mohapatra has participated in several webinars during the last few months, including the Public Health Law Watch Covid Law Briefing on Abortion Exceptionalism and Vulnerable Workers and a webinar on Racial Inequities and the Pandemic as a part of Wake Forest University School of Law's Isolated by the Law (Part Two) Symposium. She has been an invited speaker for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Worker Training Program Summer 2020 Webinar Series for Webinars on structural racism facing meat processing workers and structural issues facing workers in regards to contact tracing and testing. She is an invited member of the University of Nebraska Medical Center Ethics Advisory Committee, a group of national and international bioethics experts. She would be interested in collaborating on projects related to structural racism, gender inequity, bioethics, and health law issues.