Court sides with diabetic kids over union
August 20, 2013 OC Register
By Gloria Romero
(From the OC Register, August 20, 2013)
Chalk up a victory for the little guy – literally. Like about 14,000 school-age children in California and 1 in 400 children nationally. That’s how many are estimated to be diagnosed with diabetes and who typically need insulin injections at regularly scheduled times and when blood glucose levels fluctuate unpredictably.
In a unanimous ruling days ago, the California Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and sided with diabetic schoolchildren, over the objections of the politically powerful California Nurses Association. Even the Obama administration joined parents in opposing the nurses union, urging the court to find that federal disability law ensures diabetic students access rights.
The decision was a sound defeat for CNA, which previously had been able to defeat legislation challenging its hegemony. A major donor to Democratic candidates, CNA had long lobbied legislators to prevent anyone other than school nurses, who are unionized, from administering insulin shots.
The litigation began in 2005, when a federal class-action lawsuit was filed by the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund on behalf of four diabetic elementary school students in Northern California. They wanted to receive insulin shots from a trained volunteer. Indeed, one of the plaintiffs’ parents had been told by her school that she would just have to sit outside the child’s classroom all day, waiting to see if their daughter might have a diabetic emergency. Others were told they would be called at work to come to give a shot. Other parents were told 911 would be dialed – all because trained volunteers were being prevented from assisting a child in need.
In 2007, the California Department of Education settled the lawsuit by allowing nonmedical school employees to administer insulin, but the American Nurses Association and CNA joined forces to fight the settlement. CNA won in the lower courts, triggering the appeal that produced the Aug. 12 ruling from the state Supreme Court.
Undoubtedly, school districts are increasingly allocating fewer resources to hiring nurses. Today, California has one school nurse per 2,200 students. Only 5 percent of California schools have a full-time nurse, 69 percent have a part-time nurse, and 26 percent have none.
But as lamentable as these statistics are, parents – backed by the American Diabetes Association – argued that laypersons can learn to handle the task when a nurse is unavailable, just as parents and other family members regularly do at home. It’s no different than adults learning CPR even though they aren’t doctors.
Ultimately, the court rejected CNA’s concerns. Associate Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote, “State law … leaves to each student’s physician, with parental consent, the question whether insulin may safely … be administered by unlicensed school personnel, and reflects … that most insulin administered outside of hospitals and other clinical settings is … administered by laypersons.”
But even as the courtroom drama focused on safety, the underlying politics were always more blatant: The real fight was about protecting the jobs of adults in schools – in this case, nurses – and the unions that extract dues from them. Not surprisingly, other unions, including the teachers, joined CNA’s cause. What a sad reality because most of us believe that nurses always look out for us. Not in this case.
As is becoming the norm in education reform, parents are increasingly turning to the courts to find relief from a Legislature unable to extract itself from holding kids hostage to special interests. Now, school personnel will be able to learn how to administer insulin shots – and they won’t have to pay CNA dues to do so.