Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: state-based constitutional protections as a way of bolstering civil rights.5 If and when such measures are approved, a wide variety of commonplace age-based policies and practices may become impermissible.Age-based policies are also facing criticism at the federal level.Federal policymakers on both sides of the aisle increasingly attack age-based entitlement programs.On the right, key entitlement programs for older adults once thought of as politically untouchable are being put on the chopping block to reduce expenditures as the U.S. population becomes increasingly elderly.Republican Congressional leaders have proposed cutting Social Security by a third, 6 and some prominent Republicans have called for simply eliminating Social Security and Medicare as entitlement programs.7 On the left, liberals have suggested that furthering racial and socioeconomic equity also requires ending age-based preferences in favor of entitlement programs that benefit people of all ages, such as universal income 8 and Medicare for All. 9 Developments in international law may further challenge existing norms around age-based policy.The United Nations is currently developing a proposal for a Convention on the Rights of 5. See Helen Hershkoff, Introductory Remarks, The Promise and Limits of State Constitutions, 99 N.Y.U.L. REV.1895, 1904-05 (2024) (describing the growing interest in state constitutional law as a response to, among other things, the U.S. Supreme Court's reduced reliance on stare decisis and its 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that upended reproductive rights jurisprudence); Michael Milov-Cordoba & Alica L. Bannon, Foreword, The Promise and Limits of State Constitutions, 99 N.Y.U.L. REV.1915, 1915 (2024) (describing the growing interest in using state constitutional law to protect individual rights as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court being "an increasingly hostile venue for many forms of civil rights litigation").6. Alicia H. Munnell, Congressional Republicans Want Big Cuts to Social Security,
Source: bepress Legal Repository
Author: Kohn, Nina A.
Institutions: Yale University, Syracuse University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7159893871