May 6, 2021 from 1-2 pm ET

Preemption- Local Authority, 2021 Legislative Sessions, and the Pandemic

This webinar will look at the status of local government authority post-2021 Legislative sessions with a focus on the preemption of emergency powers, police funding, punitive protest laws, and other policies.

Speaker: Benjamin D. Winig, LiJia Gong and Lindsay Wiley

Benjamin D. Winig, JD, MPA, serves as LSSC’s Research Lead and as a member of the Legal Team.  In his roles, he cultivates and coordinates research exploring the impacts of state preemption and provides technical assistance on matters related to local government and public health law.  Ben is also the Founder of ThinkForward Strategies, a consulting firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For over two decades, he has provided legal, policy, and strategic advice and counsel to local governments, community-based organizations, think tanks, and philanthropies. His recent work has focused on dismantling barriers that impede good governance and equitable policymaking.  Ben is a skilled facilitator and trainer, and works with individuals and organizations across the country interested in challenging their potential to create positive change. Previously, he served as Vice President of Law & Policy at ChangeLab Solutions and practiced municipal law in California. Ben graduated from the University of Michigan, with distinction, and earned his law degree and master’s in public affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

LiJia Gong is an attorney with a background in litigation, public policy and political strategy.

As counsel at Public Rights Project, LiJia works with state and local governments to advance civil rights and the rights of workers and consumers. She represents cities in litigation, develops affirmative equitable enforcement, and provides policy advice and technical assistance.

Prior to joining PRP, LiJia worked on the 2018 campaign to re-elect Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. She has also represented clients in nearly all phases of litigation in cases before state and federal courts in private practice and served as a law clerk for Judge Kiyo Matsumoto of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.  LiJia earned her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and her B.S.F.S. from Georgetown University.

 

Lindsay F. Wiley teaches torts, health law, and public health law. Her research focuses on access to health care and healthy living conditions in the U.S. and globally. She is the author of Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint and Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (with Lawrence O. Gostin) and the forthcoming Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Health Law Opinions (with Seema Mohapatra).

Prior to joining the faculty at AUWCL, Professor Wiley was the Global Health Law Program Director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. She also previously worked at the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics, and Gordon, Feinblatt, Rothman LLC in Baltimore, MD.

Professor Wiley is a board member and former president of the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics and a former member of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists. She received her AB and JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard, where she served on the Harvard Law Review, and her MPH from Johns Hopkins.