(NEW YORK) — As New York City turns to vaccine passports to help limit the spread of COVID-19, other cities have pushed back against similar measures, with leaders citing a wide range of concerns, from equity to security.

This week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the nation’s largest city would soon require proof of at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for indoor dining, indoor fitness facilities and indoor entertainment facilities.

“This is crucial because we know that this will encourage a lot more vaccination,” de Blasio said Tuesday at a press briefing announcing the policy. “The goal here is to convince everyone that this is the time. If we’re going to stop the delta variant, the time is now. And that means getting vaccinated right now.”

New York City is the first U.S. city to announce such a measure as the highly contagious delta variant is driving up cases nationwide.

When asked this week if Boston would do the same, acting Mayor Kim Janey said the city is focusing on vaccine access, while likening the idea of vaccine passports to slave papers and birtherism.

“There’s a long history in this country of people needing to show their papers,” the Democrat told ABC Boston affiliate WCVB Tuesday. “During slavery, post-slavery, as recent as you know, what immigrant population has to go through here. We heard Trump with the birth certificate nonsense. Here we want to make sure that we are not doing anything that would further create a barrier for residents of Boston or disproportionally impact BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] communities.”

Disparities in vaccination rates have raised concerns about vaccine passports disproportionately impacting communities of color. Vaccination rates among Black and Latino residents in Suffolk County — where Boston sits — lag behind those of white residents, state data shows.

Janey’s comments were met with some criticism, though, particularly from fellow mayoral candidates. Boston city councilor Andrea Campbell tweeted that “this kind of rhetoric is dangerous.”

“The acting mayor’s comments yesterday put people’s health at risk, plain and simple,” Campbell said during a press briefing Wednesday while outlining her platform policies, which include requiring proof of vaccination for crowded public indoor spaces, like restaurants and gyms. “Boston has an opportunity frankly to be an example to the rest of the country when it comes to getting residents vaccinated and preventing the spread of the delta variant.”

Following Janey’s comments, Michelle Wu, another Boston mayoral candidate, said she supports requiring proof of vaccination at restaurants, shops and other indoor venues. “Our leaders need to build trust in vaccines,” she said on Twitter Tuesday.

Janey further clarified her comments regarding vaccination “hurdles,” saying on Twitter Tuesday that “we must consider our shared history as we work to ensure an equitable public health and economic recovery.”

“While there are no current plans for business sector vaccination mandates, we are using data to inform targeted public health strategies,” she said. This includes working with the hospitality sector to build on-site vaccination clinics.

The debate comes as other leaders have continued to push back against vaccine passports and other mandates on the grounds of personal liberty.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — one of several state leaders who have moved to ban vaccine passports — spoke out against the measure during a press briefing Wednesday.

“I think the question is, is we can either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state,” the Republican governor said. “I can tell ya — Florida, we’re a free state.”

Other GOP leaders have used more inflammatory rhetoric throughout the vaccination campaign by likening vaccination requirements to the Holocaust — drawing condemnation from Jewish organizations and fellow members of their party.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene apologized for comments she made in June that compared being required to wear masks in the House to the Holocaust. Republican Washington state Rep. Jim Walsh also issued an apology last month after he donned a yellow Star of David to protest COVID-19 restrictions, saying it was “inappropriate and offensive.”

In the latest incident, John Bennett, the chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, recently took to Facebook to equate vaccine passports to the yellow Star of David that Nazis forced Jewish people to wear.

“It’s not about the star, what it’s about is a totalitarian government pushing a communist agenda on top of us and forcing people against their own liberties to get this vaccine,” Bennett said in a video message Sunday following criticism to an earlier post on the Oklahoma Republican Party’s Facebook page, which included an image of the yellow Star of David with the word “Unvaccinated” on it.

Following Bennett’s initial post, local GOP leaders spoke out against the analogy, which the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City called “ill-informed and inappropriate.”

“It is sad and ironic that anyone would draw an analogy from the largest recorded genocide in the 20th century with public health attempts to save lives,” the organization said in a statement.

New York City’s vaccine mandate follows in the footsteps of the “health passes” in France and Italy.

“We do want to make as many of these settings as safe as possible,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi said during a press briefing Tuesday. “And that means having them be for people who are only fully vaccinated. That is the thrust of the policy.”

Vaccine mandates are a smart policy for a dense urban place like New York City to help encourage vaccination, Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said.

“We have to start to think about new ways to get the population to recognize the value of these vaccines,” he said. “Creating some level of requirement is important. Of course that is going to be especially important in areas of high transmission, like health care organizations, or nursing homes … but also places where there’s potentially a high risk of transmission.”

“A city like New York, which experienced the worst of the pandemic … has a lot of concerns about a potential new surge,” he said.

Each city will have its own context and “nuance in applying public health measures,” Brownstein said, and there may not be a “one-size-fits-all approach” to increasing vaccination rates.

Following New York City’s announcement, Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said during a news briefing Tuesday that the city is “interested” in the idea but there aren’t current plans to implement a similar plan.

“We’ll be watching to see how this plays out, but we don’t have a current plan to do something like that at the city level,” she said, noting that New Yorkers seem to have “embraced this vaccine passport idea a little bit more than has been embraced here in the Midwest and across Illinois.”

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(NEW YORK) — Governor Andrew Cuomo is facing further scrutiny after the New York attorney general’s office concluded he violated state and federal law in sexually harassing at least 11 women.

While State Attorney General Letitia James’ civil probe didn’t include a criminal referral, several district attorney offices from across the New York area have asked to review the investigation’s materials to determine whether criminal charges could be filed.

James’ findings, released on Tuesday, concluded that Cuomo “sexually harassed current and former New York state employees by engaging in unwelcome and non-consensual touching and making numerous offensive comments of a sexually suggestive nature that created a hostile work environment for women.”

Cuomo has denied all allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct, including inappropriate touching and sexual advances.

The attorney general’s report also concluded that Cuomo may have violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sex and prohibits gender-based harassment in the workplace. The report also cited the New York State Human Rights Law, which is similar to the federal law.

Under that law, an employee can be held liable if they engaged in conduct that violates those guidelines or if they aided and abet conduct that violates state laws. “Failure to investigate [discriminatory acts] can constitute ‘active participation’ to support an ‘aiding and abetting’ claim,” the report stated.

In 2019, Cuomo signed legislation, to much fanfare, to strengthen protections against discrimination and harassment under New York State Human Rights Law, including extending the statute of limitations for employment harassment claims to three years from one year.

James’ report also concluded that Cuomo allegedly violated federal and state law in retaliating against one of his accusers, Lindsey Boylan, who came forward with her allegations in December, by “actively engaged in an effort to discredit her,” the report stated.

“The Governor and some of his senior staff questioned at the time (and continue to question) Ms. Boylan’s motivations, claiming that she made her allegations of sexual harassment for political reasons, i.e., to bolster her political campaign, or generally to be vindictive or retaliatory herself. But retaliation is unlawful regardless of whether the employer believes the complainant is acting with a good faith belief that she was harassed,” the report stated.

Further, Cuomo and his office failed to report and investigate the allegations of sexual harassment, in violation of their own internal policies and procedures, the report found.

Karen Agnifilo, a lawyer at Geragos & Geragos and a former prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, told ABC News the allegations contained in the report released on Tuesday “absolutely articulates criminal behavior in many of the instances.”

Whether charges are pursued depends largely on “if the victims are willing to come forward, if it’s within the statute of limitations for a misdemeanor, and if there’s jurisdiction,” Agnifilo added. “This report couldn’t have been clearer. It found over and over again, that the victims were credible and, stunningly, the governor was not credible.”

ABC News Legal Analyst Dan Abrams said it’s important to note the difference between potential civil and criminal charges.

“It’s very important to distinguish between sexual harassment, which is a civil law issue, meaning people can sue over it, but the remedy is money damages — it’s an individual suing him,” Abrams said. “A criminal case is the government saying, ‘We are going to seek to punish you and potentially take away your freedom,’ and in a criminal case, the legal standard is also higher. It’s proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Abrams said the strongest case is for a misdemeanor criminal charge in connection with the claim that Cuomo allegedly groped the breast of his executive assistant who worked at the executive chamber in 2020.

“The criminal law in New York that I think that most people will be focusing on is a law called ‘forcible touching’ — it’s a class A misdemeanor, it’s up to a year in prison,” Abrams explained. “And the definition of it is forcibly touching the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person, or for the purpose of gratifying the actor’s sexual desire.”

“I think we are still a ways away from criminal charges,” said Abrams, adding that even if Cuomo is charged with the misdemeanor “you still have to also prove that it’s for the purpose of gratifying the actor’s sexual desire. And that’s one of these legal things people don’t think about every day, but in the very definition of the statute makes it harder to prove.”

That woman came forward anonymously to the Albany Times-Union in April.

Cuomo’s lawyer, Rita Glavin, issued a denial after the report was released on Tuesday that Cuomo ever groped this anonymous assistant.

“The Governor was stunned by her claim made for the first time in early March 2021 that he groped her breast,” Glavin said in a statement. “This claim is false, as the Governor has stated repeatedly and unequivocally.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Late last month Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, raised eyebrows around the country when she claimed that a reporter’s question about her COVID-19 vaccination status was a “violation of my HIPAA rights.”

Not even close, legal experts say.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a 1996 federal law, is a widely cited and misunderstood privacy statutes. In the age of COVID and questions about the disease and vaccines in the workplace, schools and elsewhere, debate over and misinformation about the law, which “gives you rights over your health information and sets rules and limits on who can look at and receive your health information,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has taken on a whole new life.

“HIPAA is the tool the government uses to try and protect some of your personal health care information,” explained Juan Morado, a health care regulatory and policy attorney at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, LLP. “It’s a rule that prevents hospitals, health insurance companies, pharmacies, and health care companies from sharing certain protected health information (PHI) you provide them with anyone else without your permission.”

In other words, the law primarily applies to health insurance companies and health care providers. Neither individual citizens nor most employers are considered “covered entities” under HIPAA, according to HHS.

“HIPAA’s protection is incomplete,” said Dr. M. Gregg Bloch, a professor of health law, policy and ethics at Georgetown Law. “The bottom line is that HIPAA is meant to provide some control for the consumer, for the patient, over how his or her information flows,” he added.

“Here’s the huge misunderstanding: What HIPAA does not do is stand in the way of anybody answering the question, ‘Have you been vaccinated?'”

When asked about Greene’s HIPPA comments, communications director Nick Dyer told ABC News, “It’s none of the media’s business. Privacy still exists in America, even though the fake news works every day to erode it.”

Who and what falls under HIPAA?

Three main entities are covered under HIPAA: health care providers, health plans and health care clearing houses. Health care providers include doctors, clinics, mental health providers, dentists, nursing homes and pharmacies. Health plans include health insurance companies, HMOs, company health plans and government health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Health care clearing houses process health information.

A few practical examples of when the law would come into play: “Your doctor can’t share your blood test results without your permission,” Morado said. “A pharmacist isn’t allowed to tell your employer if you’re on medication without your permission.”

Greene is far from the first to wildly misinterpret HIPAA.

Public relations departments and health care organizations are notorious for artfully misinterpreting the law, and claiming health information disclosures fall under HIPAA when they do not, in order to block information they’d prefer not to disclose to the public.

Bloch pointed to the early days of the pandemic, when U.S. nursing homes suffered major outbreaks. While nursing homes are covered entities under HIPAA, he explained, data needs to be identifiable in order to be protected for privacy reasons.

“The main misuse of HIPAA is by health care entities that want to hide the ball when they feel they have numbers that are going to make them look bad,” Bloch said. So when health care journalists, for example, ask a nursing home for de-identified data about people who died there during an outbreak, HIPAA is not a relevant factor.

“That’s utter nonsense,” Bloch said of health care firms blocking requests for de-identified data by citing HIPAA. “HIPAA does not stand in the way of sharing that kind of data.”

Widespread misinterpretations of HIPAA have also trickled down to ordinary citizens, who wind up thinking the law extends further than it does. “These things become on the surface, conventional wisdoms, and then people believe it,” Bloch explained.

“Maybe a doctor’s office doesn’t want to bother with sharing a medical record, and so some assistant up front says HIPAA,” he added. “He or she doesn’t know what they’re talking about. But the typical patient is not a lawyer, so the patient might not want to get into anything resembling a confrontational relationship with his or her doctor’s office.”

The result: The patient takes the incorrect information about HIPAA at face value and the myth proliferates. “Those are some of the ways that this mythology leeches into public space,” Bloch said.

Other everyday situations that aren’t covered under HIPAA: “If your boss/teacher asks if you’re vaccinated, that’s not covered by HIPAA,” Morado said. Neither is your step count or heart rate recorded by an Apple Watch or Fitbit, he added.

“The biggest misconception is HIPAA protects all of your personal health care Information and that it applies to all businesses,” Morado said. “HIPAA only protects information given to covered entities.”

A non-exhaustive list of entities that are NOT covered by HIPAA, according to HHS:

Life insurers
Employers
Workers compensation carriers
Most schools and school districts
Many state agencies like child protective service agencies
Most law enforcement agencies
Many municipal offices

At the end of the day, HIPAA is “porous, maybe even squishy,” according to Bloch. It’s also subject to politics and political interests. While the law was meant to protect patient privacy, “the players that saw their business strategies as vulnerable got into the game, and made sure that there was plenty of Swiss cheese,” he said of HIPAA. In addition to being misinterpreted, the law has many loopholes that benefit the marketing and the pharmaceutical industries, for whom health care data is extremely valuable.

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The TAKE with Rick Klein

Debates over masks and mandates might make it seem like 2020.

It might also well be a taste of 2024. President Joe Biden’s admonition that lawmakers who are blocking vaccine requirements should “get out of the way” accomplished nothing of the sort — and may have had the opposite reaction.

“I am standing in your way,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday, declaring that Florida will remain a “free state” where no one will be required to show proof of vaccination or force children to wear masks.

DeSantis and other potential presidential contenders who are Republican governors — including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — have sought to one-up each other when it comes to establishing themselves as champions of personal liberty before and now during this troublesome period of the pandemic.

New polling shows Biden’s trust in handling the pandemic slipping among voters. Quinnipiac University numbers out Wednesday found the president’s approval on COVID at 53% of Americans — down a dozen points since May.

Biden aides, meanwhile, have begun calling out states, including Texas and Florida, where the delta variant is contributing to spikes in cases. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday “that’s not meant to be political,” and is simply “meant to convey that more action is needed in some part of the country.”

Of course, it is political. Republican leaders don’t need the contradictory messaging of former President Donald Trump to make resistance to vaccine and mask mandates a mantra, and skepticism of conflicting advice from scientists crosses party lines.

Now with the concept of “vaccine passports” gaining currency in some localities and businesses, partisan lines are hardening as quickly as campaign fundraising pitches can be written.

The RUNDOWN with Averi Harper

The walls are closing in on disgraced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

After the announcement of the devastating findings in the state Attorney General’s report on Cuomo’s misconduct and an avalanche of calls for him to resign, state lawmakers could move toward impeachment.

The New York State Assembly, where Democrats hold a vast majority, needs 76 votes to proceed with impeachment. According to ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, at least 82 of the state Assembly’s 150 members are in favor authorizing an impeachment trial. This as Cuomo clings to power with no sign of voluntary resignation.

If impeached, Cuomo would be the second New York state executive to face impeachment. The first was William Sulzer who is the only New York governor to be impeached and convicted. His removal followed accusations of campaign finance fraud in 1913.

If Cuomo were to be removed from office, it would make way for the state’s first female governor. As laid out in the New York’s constitution, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul would immediately become the acting governor during an impeachment trial. If Cuomo is convicted, she would continue in that role through the end of his term.

The assembly’s judiciary committee is slated to meet Monday morning to discuss their impeachment investigation.

The TIP with Meg Cunningham

Four Republicans vying to oust California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized his response to the coronavirus pandemic in a debate Wednesday night on some of the top issues facing the state.

The candidates who joined Newsom all opposed mask mandates, but their solutions to curbing the spread of the virus and its variants differed.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer encouraged viewers to get the vaccine (he and his family got it) but said he does not support mask mandates in schools, which are currently in place ahead of the 2021 school year.

Businessman John Cox took a different approach, saying he doesn’t support mandates or believe that people who have had the coronavirus should get the vaccine, because they have antibodies that protect them against it.

Former Congressman Doug Ose and state Assemblyman Kevin Kiley both pushed back against mandates, saying they have faith that Californians can make the right decisions for themselves and their families. Kiley took the opportunity to call out Newsom’s response directly, saying the governor was “bright lights and cash giveaways,” in an attempt to conceal a broken state government.

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