The Washington Post - 05.10.2019

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case had requested the court’s

intervention.

“Louisiana has tried every-

thing under the sun to decimate

access to abortion care,” said

Kathaleen Pittman, clinic admin-

istrator at Hope Medical Group,

one of the plaintiffs. “The situa-

tion here is already dire and this

law would be the last straw for

most of the remaining clinics.

We’re hopeful that the court will

recognize how devastating this

law would be for women in our

state.”

Louisiana Attorney General

Jeff Landry (R) had also asked

the court to review the decision.

He wants the justices to decide

that abortion providers don’t

have the legal standing to chal-

lenge laws such as the one the

Louisiana legislature passed.

“The evidence of Louisiana

abortion clinics’ poor safety rec-

ords, inadequate credentialing

practices, and questionable ef-

forts to undermine health and

safety regulations shows that the

abortion clinics’ interests are di-

rectly adverse to the interests of

Louisiana women,” Landry said

in a statement. “Incompetent and

unsafe providers should not be

allowed to challenge health and

safety standards designed to pro-

tect women from those very pro-

viders.”

The case is June  Medical  Ser­

vices v. Gee.

[email protected]

justice of the Supreme Court who

decided Whole  Woman’s  Health

would endorse our opinion,”

Judge Stephen A. Higginson

wrote in his dissent. “The majori-

ty would not, and I respectfully

suggest that the dissenters might

not either.”

Both sides in the Louisiana

Louisiana would be affected.

The full 5th Circuit declined to

reconsider the panel’s decision,

and dissenting judges said their

colleagues seemed more intent

on giving the Supreme Court a

chance to reverse its 2016 ruling

than complying with it.

“I am unconvinced that any

He said that the closing of

some clinics in Louisiana, as

opposed to Texas, would not dra-

matically increase driving dis-

tances and that it was easier for

doctors in Louisiana to procure

admitting privileges. He said that

“at most, only 30 percent of

women” seeking abortions in

could consider its merits.

The court’s 2016 decision

in the Texas case,  Whole  Wom­

an’s  Health  v.  Hellerstedt, said

the admitting-privileges require-

ment “provides few, if any, health

benefits for women, poses a sub-

stantial obstacle to women seek-

ing abortions, and constitutes an

‘undue burden’ on their constitu-

tional right to do so.”

Hospitalization after an abor-

tion is rare, all sides agree, and

the lack of admitting privileges

by the doctor who performed the

procedure is not a bar to the

woman getting needed medical

care. The court’s opinion said

there are numerous reasons doc-

tors might not be able to attain

admitting privileges at a nearby

hospital, including the fact that it

is so rare for their clients to need

hospitalization.

But last fall, a panel of the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the 5th

Circuit upheld the Louisiana law

in a 2-to-1 vote, finding factual

distinctions between how the re-

striction played out in Texas and

Louisiana.

Judge Jerry E. Smith, writing

for the majority, said that the

court complied with the Supreme

Court’s decision in Whole  Wom­

an’s Health by taking a painstak-

ingly close look at the details.

“Unlike in Texas, the [Louisi-

ana law] does not impose a sub-

stantial burden on a large frac-

tion of women,” he concluded.

to pass their own health and
safety standards designed to pro-
tect women inside abortion ven-
dors.”
Abortion rights supporters
turned up the dial as well.
“Access to abortion is hanging
by a thread in this country, and
this case is what could snap that
thread,” Alexis McGill Johnson,
acting president of Planned Par-
enthood Federation of America,
said in a statement. “There’s only
one reason the court would not
strike down the Louisiana law
and that is because Justice Ken-
nedy, who voted to protect abor-
tion access just three years ago,
has been replaced with Justice
Kavanaugh. This is what we’ve
warned about.”
It was no surprise the court
accepted the case. In February,
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
and the court’s liberals entered a
stay that kept the law from going
into effect. Roberts was a dissent-
er in the 5-to-3 ruling in the 2016
case (Scalia had died months
before) and the reason for his
most recent vote remains a mat-
ter of speculation.
He may have questioned
whether the lower court’s deci-
sion to uphold the Louisiana law
complied with the court’s prec-
edent, or he could have simply
wanted to maintain the status
quo until the Supreme Court

SUPREME COURT FROM A

Justices to examine restrictive Louisiana abortion law

BY RACHEL SIEGEL

When Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-
Mich.) was invited to tour the
Detroit Police Department’s Real
Time Crime Center, the purpose
was to explain how officers use
facial recognition when policing
the streets of a city that is more
than 80 percent black.
But the meeting quickly deteri-
orated when Tlaib told Chief
James Craig that “analysts need
to be African Americans, not
people that are not,” because
“non-African Americans think
African Americans all look the
same.”
Craig, who is African Ameri-
can, said the suggestion that
white analysts would be less ad-
ept at their jobs than people of
color was “insulting.”
Tlaib’s comments, however,
were consistent with an enduring
debate that rages around facial-
recognition software: the systems
more accurately identify lighter-
skinned faces than those of peo-

ple of color. Researchers and

numerous studies says that is

because the software is trained

on vast sets of images that skew

heavily toward white men, leav-

ing women and minorities vul-

nerable to holes in mammoth

databases.

That can be especially risky,

critics say, as facial recognition is

embraced by government and

law enforcement.

Critics also worry that people

are not being trained adequately

in how to use the technology and

interpret its results. Researchers

say that law enforcement agen-

cies do not always disclose how

its analysts are taught to use the

systems, or who is conducting the

training. And they worry that

even if a department claims a

strong training protocol, people

will inevitably let biases about

gender and race creep into how

they assess a match.

“There’s a huge amount of

reliance that this is going to be

accurate if it spits out a match, or

a candidate list of five people,”

said Jake Laperruque, senior

counsel at The Constitution Proj-

ect at the Project on Government

Oversight. “And that’s just not the

case.”

Camera quality, lighting and

the size of a system’s database can

all affect facial recognition’s accu-

racy. But researchers say that

improving those factors doesn’t

erase a system’s hard-wired bias-

es. One 2018 study conducted by

Joy Buolamwini of the M.I.T. Me-

dia Lab found that the technology

is correct 99 percent of the time

with photos of white men. But the

software misidentified the gen-

der as often as 35 percent of the

time when viewing an image of a

darker-skinned woman.

In January, researchers with

M.I.T. Media Lab reported that

facial-recognition software devel-

oped by Amazon and marketed to

local and federal law enforce-

ment also fell short on basic

accuracy tests, including correct-

ly identifying a person’s gender.

Specifically, Amazon’s Rekogni-

tion system was perfect in pre-

dicting the gender of lighter-

skinned men, the researchers

said, but misidentified the gender

of darker-skinned women in

roughly 30 percent of their tests.

Amazon disputed those find-

ings, saying the research used

algorithms that work differently

from the facial-recognition sys-

tems used by police departments.

(Amazon founder and chief exec-

utive Jeff Bezos owns The Wash-

ington Post.)

But the results, researchers

say, offer a cautionary tale for

millions of Americans. A 2016

report by Georgetown Law re-

searchers found that the facial

images of half of all American

adults, or more than 117 million

people, were accessible in a law-

enforcement facial-recognition

database.

Greater scrutiny on these data-

bases has spurred some progress.

ImageNet, an online image data-

base, recently said it would re-

move 600,000 pictures of people

from its system after an art proj-

ect showed the severity of the bias

wired into its artificial intelli-

gence. Artist Trevor Paglen and

AI researcher Kate Crawford

showed how the system could

generate derogatory results when

people uploaded photos of them-

selves. A woman might be called a

“slut,” for example, and an Afri-

can American user could be la-

beled a “wrongdoer” or with a

racial epithet.

Unlike many social and policy

debates gripping Washington, fa-

cial-recognition has drawn sharp

criticism from Republican and

Democratic lawmakers alike. In

May, members of the House Over-

sight and Reform Committee

jointly condemned the technol-

ogy, charging that it was inaccu-

rate and threatened Americans’

privacy and freedom of expres-

sion. But there are no current

federal rules governing artificial

intelligence or facial recognition

software.

“We have a technology that

was created and designed by one

demographic, that is only mostly

effective on that one demograph-

ic, and they’re trying to sell it and

impose it on the entirety of the

country,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-

Cortez (D-N.Y.) said earlier this

year.

Detroit’s police board ap-

proved the use of facial recogni-

tion software last month. But the

technology has not been em-

braced by all locales. San Francis-

co and Oakland, Calif., along with

Somerville, Mass., have banned

local government agencies, in-

cluding police departments, from

using the software. In September,

California lawmakers temporari-

ly banned state and local law

enforcement from using facial-

recognition software in body

cameras.

Beyond the software itself, crit-

ics worry that users will put too

much faith in facial recognition,

even as they acknowledge the

software’s pitfalls. Laperruque

pointed to the “CSI Effect” —

when people come to believe in

the technology’s infallibility be-

cause of how they see it used in a

crime shows on TV.

“Training in general is seen as a

pretty essential feature of getting

this to work,” Laperruque said.

“There’s an expectation when law

enforcement and the public see a

new sci-fi-looking tool to say,

‘This is a magical, futuristic tech-

nology,’ when in reality, facial

recognition is a lot more akin to

outsourcing policing to glitchy

computers.”

Jennifer Lynch, surveillance

litigation director of the Elec-

tronic Frontier Foundation,

pointed to studies showing how

poorly people identify images of

people they don’t know — espe-

cially when it comes to people of

different races or ethnicity.

Researchers say that among

police departments that use the

software, there aren’t always

clear or transparent standards

for how officials are trained on

the systems, or how much weight

is given to the results.

“The police departments say,

‘we are not considering this an

exact match because we have

humans that look at this after the

fact and verify the technology,’ ”

Lynch said, “which is problematic

because humans are not good at

identifying people.”

[email protected]

Congresswoman isn’t only one who thinks race a≠ects facial-recognition results

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST

The Supreme Court in 2016 struck down an almost identical Texas law requiring doctors at abortion

clinics to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, but the court’s makeup has changed since then.

Tlaib, critics say software

uses photos that heavily

skew toward white men

BY SEAN SULLIVAN

Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a
heart attack earlier this week be-
fore a stent procedure was con-
ducted to clear an artery, doctors
said Friday in a statement released
by his presidential campaign.
Sanders, 78, was released from a
Las Vegas hospital Friday.
“Sen. Sanders was diagnosed
with a myocardial infarction,” his
treating physicians, Arturo E.
Marchand Jr. and Arjun Gururaj,
said in the statement Friday.
The independent senator from
Vermont, dressed in a blue button-
down shirt and a dark blazer,
waved to cameras as he departed
the hospital Friday afternoon
alongside his wife, Jane. He told
reporters he felt “great, thank you”
before entering a dark SUV.
The statement, released after
Sanders left the hospital, marked
the first time the campaign had
acknowledged he had a heart at-
tack. Aides had previously de-
clined to answer questions about
his diagnosis.
Asked Friday why they waited
to announce the diagnosis, Sand-
ers campaign spokesman Mike
Casca said, “We just wanted to
wait until he was discharged to
give out the information all at
once.”
On Wednesday, Sanders’s cam-
paign said he was hospitalized af-
ter experiencing chest pains at a
Tuesday night campaign event. Af-
ter doctors discovered an artery
blockage, the campaign said then,

they inserted two stents.

“The Senator was stable upon

arrival and taken immediately to

the cardiac catheterization labo-

ratory, at which time two stents

were placed in a blocked coronary

artery in a timely fashion,” his

doctors said Friday. “All other ar-

teries were normal.”

They said his hospital stay was

“uneventful with good expected

progress. He was discharged with

instructions to follow up with his

personal physician.”

It was not immediately clear

what effect Sanders’s health issues

would have on his second straight

campaign for the presidency.

While he was hospitalized, a sen-

ior aide said his campaign events

were canceled “until further no-

tice.”

Sanders planned to fly home to

Vermont on Saturday, his cam-

paign said. Over the weekend, sur-

rogates are fanning out across ear-

ly nominating states to campaign

on his behalf.

Shortly after leaving the hospi-

tal, Sanders posted a video on

Twitter in which he said he was

feeling better. “See you soon on the

campaign trail,” he added.

His wife, Jane, said before his

release that Sanders would “take a

few days to rest” but would take

part in the Oct. 15 Democratic

presidential debate. It was not

clear whether he would resume

his normal campaign activities be-

fore then.

An arterial blockage such as

Sanders’s typically has a good

prognosis and does not normally

require a long recovery period,

medical experts said earlier this

week, before it was known that he

had suffered a heart attack.

Sanders’s condition has revived

a debate over age and health in the

Democratic Party. The three can-

didates leading the polls in the

Democratic primary — Sanders,

former vice president Joe Biden

and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-

Mass.) — are in their 70s. Presi-

dent Trump is also a septuagenari-

an.

Earlier in the campaign, some

younger candidates made the ar-

gument that it was time to turn the

party’s leadership over to a new

generation. But that pitch was

mostly aimed at Biden, at the time

the clear leader in the polls.

Sanders’s medical crisis oc-

curred amid some good news for

his campaign — an announce-

ment this week that he raised

$25.3 million, more than any oth-

er candidate for the Democratic

nomination, in the third quarter.

In recent weeks, Sanders has

slipped in the polls.

Sanders campaign manager

Faiz Shakir sought to emphasize

his position in the money chase on

Friday.

“Our third quarter fundraising

totals make clear that Bernie’s

campaign is part of a working

class movement taking on the

greed and corruption of the corpo-

rate elite,” Shakir said in a state-

ment.

Sanders, in a tweet issued from

the hospital this week, used his

hospitalization to argue for his

agenda, specifically the Medicare-

for-all plan he has long champi-

oned. He noted that a health emer-

gency can come as a surprise, as

his did.

In the statement released by his

campaign Friday, Sanders

thanked the doctors and nurses

who treated him.

“After two and a half days in the

hospital, I feel great, and after

taking a short time off, I look

forward to getting back to work,”

Sanders said.

[email protected]

Sanders su≠ered a heart attack, his doctors announce

SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) walks at the Iowa State Fair in August with his wife, Jane. He experienced chest pains at a campaign event on

Tuesday, and an arterial blockage was discovered. Two stents were placed, and he is expected to return to Vermont on Saturday.

Senator is out of hospital;

timing of his return to

campaign trail is unclear