Health-e Law Podcast Ep. 16
Crossroads of Care: Navigating Executive Orders with Jonathan Meyer, former DHS GC and Partner at Sheppard Mullin
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Listen to the podcast released February 25, 2025, here:
https://www.sheppard.com/multimedia-627
Welcome to Health-e Law, Sheppard Mullin's podcast exploring the fascinating health tech topics and trends of the day. In this episode, Jonathan Meyer, a partner at Sheppard Mullin and Leader of the firm’s National Security Team, joins us again to discuss the early days of the new Trump administration and what might be on the horizon in terms of cybersecurity and data privacy.
About Jonathan Meyer
As a partner in Sheppard Mullin’s Governmental Practice Group and leader of the firm’s National Security team, Jonathan E. Meyer counsels clients on their interactions with federal and state government, as well as national and homeland security, Congressional oversight, cybersecurity, AI, high tech, and transportation security, among other issues.
Prior to returning to Sheppard Mullin, Jon was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate as the Sixth General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, serving from 2021 to 2024. His decades of experience in Congress, the Justice Department and DHS position him to bring an insider’s perspective to interactions between private companies and the government. He has defended scores of Congressional investigations and has prepared witnesses for over 100 hearings, including Supreme Court nomination hearings, impeachment hearings, oversight hearings, high tech and antitrust investigations, and civil rights investigations, among others. He has also represented defendants and witnesses in high-stakes Justice Department criminal investigations.
The media – including CBS News, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Politico – regularly turn to Jon for insight into issues regarding national security, homeland security, government investigations, cybersecurity, immigration, politics and Congress. He has twice been honored with the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Outstanding Service Medal, the highest civilian award bestowed by DHS. He has also received the U.S. Secret Service Director’s Honor Award, the Customs and Border Protection Commissioner’s Ensign Award, and the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant’s Distinguished Service Medal, among numerous other prestigious accolades recognizing his exceptional service.
About Sara Shanti
A partner in the Corporate Practice Group in the Sheppard Mullin's Chicago office and co-lead of its Digital Health Team, Sara Shanti’s practice sits at the forefront of healthcare technology by providing practical counsel on novel innovation and complex data privacy matters. Using her medical research background and HHS experience, Sara advises providers, payors, start-ups, technology companies, and their investors and stakeholders on digital healthcare and regulatory compliance matters, including artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), gamification, implantable and wearable devices, and telehealth.
At the cutting edge of advising on "data as an asset" programming, Sara's practice supports investment in innovation and access to care initiatives, including mergers and acquisitions involving crucial, high-stakes and sensitive data, medical and wellness devices, and web-based applications and care.
Transcript:
Sara Shanti:
Welcome to Health-e Law. I'm Sara Shanti, a partner in Sheppard Mullin's Healthcare Group, recently named Law 360's 2024 Healthcare Practice Group of the Year. Today I again have the pleasure of being joined by Jonathan Meyer, my law partner in Washington, DC, and leader of Sheppard Mullin's National Security Team. Jon recently rejoined our firm after serving as general counsel of the US Department of Homeland Security from 2021 to 2024.
Thank you for joining us again today, Jon.
Jonathan Meyer:
Thanks, Sara. It's great to be here.
Sara Shanti:
We have seen a flurry of executive actions and changes, including to the US Department of Health and Human Services. What else can we expect from your perspective on cybersecurity and of course, protecting the US and the data that resides here in the US?
Jonathan Meyer:
When I have meetings, and I'm having a lot of them right now with clients who want to know what to expect in the Trump administration, I come into the habit of always starting with the same advisory, which is the one thing you can predict about the Trump administration is it will be unpredictable. So that's a huge caveat. But that said, we've seen that while unpredictable, they're definitely not sitting around. They've been unusually, extraordinarily active, much more than any other administration in its first week, and they are really breaking the China left and right in ways that are unprecedented. There's a lot going on. There's a lot more happening. As we speak, there were several new executive orders that he issued, and that's going to continue. And over time, it's going to move down into the departments and the agency. So we'll see more out of HHS think in terms of health and cyber issues, HHS, FTC, CSA, FDA, those kinds of places, CDC, but they will all be as part of an effort to fill out the mandate and the orders that the president is issuing.
So this is just the beginning. It's going to be very active and a lot of disruption, which is what the president campaigned on, and he's following through on it. It's a time of upheaval for sure, both legally and otherwise. So I strongly recommend that folks keep an eye on it, look at the tracker or consult your attorney because literally, with some of these immigration clients, the advice I give one day, I have to change the next day because a new order or a directive came out, and that's the way it's working right now. So it's a crazy time.
Sara Shanti:
Yeah. It's keeping us humble. Every morning, we wake up and make sure that we're not relying on what we knew of yesterday.
Jonathan Meyer:
Exactly.
Sara Shanti:
Congratulations. I know you have one of the most popular and highly regarded executive order trackers, and I know that includes some information about AI, privacy, immigration. So maybe you could just for a second tell our listeners about why that tracker is so important and how to use it, and we'll, of course, put a link to it in our show notes.
Jonathan Meyer:
Sure. Yeah. I think early on Inauguration Day, I thought to myself, huh, there's a lot that's going to be coming. We should probably put something together as a resource for ourselves, our clients, and for the public. And so we did, and we have a document that lists every executive action, orders, presidential memos, other things that President Trump has taken since he took office, links to the text of them. It says it has a brief summary, lists relevant dates, lists relevant agencies that are affected by it, but then also has links to analysis that has been published in various places, as well as some of the legal challenges that are now emerging, where people are suing the government to stop some of these, for example, the birthright citizenship executive order.
And of course, we have them categorized and we have a number that are in the category of technology, AI, cybersecurity, crypto, those sorts of things. And yeah, no, it has really taken off. I think our tracker has become particularly popular because it has really more information than the others do. It has all those categories and all of that information. And so, literally, tens of thousands of people have looked at it at any given moment. We've got about 80 different people looking at it, which is great because it's a public resource. It's being used by people in all different communities, the pro bono community, the corporate community, private individuals, law firms, and it's just a way to get the word out to allow people to be as well-informed as they can.
Sara Shanti:
Yeah, and let me commend you because it's really well done, and it's not just for attorneys or those folks in the legal field. It's really for, I think, the public to see what comes down. I think it's also really interesting to see the title of the executive order because sometimes the title in itself, I think is a little misleading of what it actually does. So that analysis is so important for the whole country.
Jonathan Meyer:
It's been very gratifying that so many people have found it useful, so glad to have been of service to folks.
Sara Shanti:
And I know one area that has gotten a ton of attention is immigration. Of course, when you think about immigration, there's always a conversation, a layered conversation, of course, but part of it is always national security, border security. But healthcare of course impacts all of our immigrants as well, no matter if they're documented or undocumented. And our laws don't differentiate between privacy, health information privacy for a citizen versus a non-citizen. So could you maybe speak to again, how healthcare is struggling with privacy and immigration and that really loud argument in the room about how this affects Homeland Security?
Jonathan Meyer:
As many people know, virtually all of the immigration work of the United States government is housed at the Department of Homeland Security, along with FEMA and the Secret Service and the Coast Guard and many other things. So as general counsel of DHS, I had all the immigration law stuff under me. So since really the election was determined, we've been getting a lot of calls from a lot of folks, including, and really especially a lot of healthcare providers who have questions about what to do because the prospect of increased ICE raids now where ICE agents show up at your door and ask to want to arrest an undocumented immigrant who's a patient or an employee of a hospital or a medical office. And so we're getting a lot of those questions. So we're talking to folks and I encourage people to reach out if they want to talk because everything's case by case.
But there is absolutely this tie to healthcare data and data security because a lot of times what ICE and the immigration authorities are doing is they are asking for information about someone, perhaps a patient. And depending on the form in which ICE is asking, you may or may not be obligated to respond. And then, at the same time, you have under statutes like HIPAA that are healthcare data security statutes as opposed to immigration. And so it's a complicated analysis that needs to be done and there are competing issues. So that's definitely raising a lot of interest right now.
Sara Shanti:
Right. And HIPAA has very, very limited exceptions when it comes to law enforcement asks and other reasons to share sensitive health information. So yeah, we encourage the whole industry to reach out if they need some guidance on how to meet their privacy requirements and their security requirements and respond to those inquiries.
Alright Jon, that said, thank you for being with us again. We will put that Executive Order tracker in the show notes, and we encourage everyone to take a look and keep that link close by as things continue to move. Looking forward to you all joining us next time, and we're standing by in the event you need us in the meantime. Thank you.
Contact Info:
Additional Resources:
Trump Executives Action Tracker
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