Seema Mohapatra

MD Anderson Foundation Endowed Professor in Health Law and Professor of Law

Full-time faculty

Email

smohapatra@smu.edu

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Seema Mohapatra is a leading expert in health law and bioethics and has been teaching for over fifteen years. Mohapatra’s research centers around health care equity, the intersection of biosciences and the law, assisted reproduction and surrogacy, reproductive justice, and public health law. Professor Mohapatra is a tenured full professor and holds the M.D. Anderson Foundation Endowed Professorship in Health Law at 51做厙 Dedman School of Law. Her work has been published in various top law reviews, including the Emory Law Journal, the University of Colorado Law Review, the Harvard Law and Policy Review, and the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, and numerous peer reviewed journals, such as Hastings Center Report, Journal of the American Medical Association, and the American Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics.

Professor Mohapatra is the co-editor of “Feminist Judgments: Health Law Rewritten” (with Lindsay F. Wiley) (2022, Cambridge University Press). She is also a co-author of the third edition of the textbook “Reproductive Technologies and the Law” (with Judith Daar, I. Glenn Cohen, and Sonia Suter) (2022, Carolina Academic Press). She serves on the Board of Directors of American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics and the nonprofit Population Connection, and the Ethics Advisory Committee at the UNMC Global Center for Health Security. She also co-chairs the Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy Initiative, with Brietta Clark, Lindsay Wiley, and Ruqaiijah Yearby.

Professor Mohapatra is a frequent national speaker and is often consulted by the media about a wide variety of health law and bioethical topics. Her work has been featured in numerous national publications such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, Bloomberg News, and she is often on numerous local and national television and radio stations, including CNN and National Public Radio.

Upon graduation from law school, she practiced transactional health law and compliance at two large firms in Chicago, Sidley & Austin and Foley & Lardner. Professor Mohapatra earned a J.D. degree from Northwestern University School of Law and has a master’s degree in Public Health with a concentration in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from Yale University. She earned a bachelor of arts in Natural Sciences (with a minor in Women's Studies) from Johns Hopkins University.

Area of expertise

  • Bioethics
  • Torts
  • Family Law
  • Health Care
  • Health Law

Education

B.A., Johns Hopkins University
M.P.H., Yale University 
J.D., Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

Courses

Torts
Critical Race Theory
Race, Health & Justice

Articles

Structural Discrimination in Pandemic Policy: Essential Protections for Essential Workers, 50 Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 1 (2022) (with Ruqaiijah Yearby)
 

Systemic Racism, The Government’s Pandemic Response, and Racial Inequities in COVID-19, 70 Emory Law Journal 1419 (2021) (with Ruqaiijah Yearby)

Passports of Privilege, 70 American University Law Review 1729 (2021)

COVID-19 and Law Teaching: Guidance on Developing an Asynchronous Online Course for Law Students, 65 St. Louis University Law Journal 471 (2021) (with Yvonne Dutton)

Health Justice Strategies to Combat the Pandemic: Eliminating Discrimination, Poverty, and Health Inequities During and After COVID-19, 19 Yale Journal Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 122 (2020) (co-authored)

COVID-19 and the Conundrum of Mask Requirements, Washington and Lee Law Review Online (2020) (with Robert Gatter)

Law in the Time of Zika: Disability Rights and Reproductive Justice Collide, 84 Brooklyn Law Review 325 (2020) (co-authored)
 

Law, Structural Racism, and the COVID-19 Pandemic, 7 Oxford Journal of Law and the Biosciences 1 (2020) (with Ruqaiijah Yearby)

The Moral Economy of Fertility Markets: Hope and Hype, History and Inclusion, 48 Journal of Law, Medicine And Ethics 765 (2020) (with Dov Fox)

Resolving Tensions Between Disability Rights Law and COVID-19 Mask Policies, 80 Maryland Law Review Online 1 (2019) (co-authored)

Book chapters

Health Justice: Feminism, Universalism, and Vulnerability in Pandemic Response, in (Taylor & Francis Group 2024)

, in  (Cambridge University Press 2021)

, in  (Cambridge University Press 2020) (with Melanie B. Jacobs)

States of Confusion: Regulation of Surrogacy in the United States, in COMMODIFICATION OF THE HUMAN BODY: A CANNIBAL MARKET (J.D. Rainhorn & S. El Boudamoussi eds. 2015)

A Race to the Bottom?: The Need for International Regulation of the Rapidly Growing Global Surrogacy Market, in  (Lexington Books 2015)

Media

WIRED.com, quoted in (May 2022)

Ms. Magazine, Op-ed, (May 2022)

LX.com, interviewed in (May 2022)

Business Insider, quoted in (May 2022)

Business Insider, quoted in (May 2022)

Business Insider, quoted in (May 2022)

Salon,quoted in (May 2022)

News Channel 2 WKTV (CBS), quoted in (May 2022)

WFAA 8 (ABC), quoted in (May 2022)

Salon,quoted in (May 2022)

WIRED.com, quoted in (May 2022)

The Skimm, quoted in (May 2022)

Texas Standard, quoted in (May 2022)

Bloomberg Law, quoted in (May 2022)

Bloomberg Law, quoted in (May 2022)

Houston Public Media.org, quoted in (May 2022)

Texas Standard, quoted in (May 2022)

Spectrum News, quoted in (May 2022)

2022 Patrick T. Fallon/AFP, , Bloomberg Law, March 21

2022 Jill Ament, , Texas Standard, March 16

2022 , Texas Standard.org, March 16

2022 Paige Sutherland & Meghna Chakrabarti, , WBUR-On Point, February 1

2022 Jill Ament, , Texas Standard, January 10