Obsidian Wings

The Dead

by JanieM

Add more if you like.

Buffalo

Roberta Drury, 32
Margus Morrison, 52
Andre Mackneil, 53
Aaron Salter Jr., 55
Geraldine Talley, 62
Celestine Chaney, 65
Heyward Patterson, 67
Katherine Massey, 72
Pearl Young, 77
Ruth Whitfield, 86

Laguna Woods

Dr. John Cheng, 52

***

I went for a drive last Saturday and noticed a lot of flags flying at half-staff. The state website informed me that they were lowered in memory of the million-plus Americans who have died of covid-19. Too many to list...but if you would like to remember anyone here (whether they died of covid or something else), feel free.

Death is inevitable, but one could wish that it might be less unpreventable.

Would mandated kidney donations be Constitutional?

by Ugh

Suppose State X passes a law providing "all individuals meeting the living kidney donor criteria* shall donate one of their kidneys to any discovered matching recipient in need and any individual refusing to donate shall be subject to a sentence of no more than Y years in prison."

Such a law would be consistent with similar laws imposing a duty to act or suffer state imposed civil/criminal punishment: (i) conscription in the Army; (ii) registration for the Draft; and (iii) mandatory reporting for, e.g., teachers, school administrators, therapists (see also Butler v. Perry, 240 U.S. 328).  

What, if anything, in the Constitution would bar a State from passing and enforcing that law?  

*Other than being willing, of course