Levin College of Law

Jerron Wheeler

Teaching and Research Fellow

Expertise

Health Law  • Medicaid  • Poverty Law  • 

About

Professor Jerron Wheeler is a Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. His scholarship focuses on the legal structures that shape public welfare delivery, particularly Medicaid, at the intersection of health and administrative law. His forthcoming article in the Washington and Lee Law Review uses Medicaid’s main pediatric benefit, Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT), to examine how even the clearest congressional mandates can be undermined by a cooperative (joint-state) governance model that fails to hold recalcitrant states and idle agencies accountable for poor performance. Joining the broader debates about the decentralization of public benefits, this article proposes a child-centered governance model that actually delivers the services Congress intended to.

Professor Wheeler’s previous work has appeared in publications such as the University of Maryland Law Journal for Race, Religion, Gender & Class, the University of California Journal for Race and Economic Justice, and the Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review. As a practicing attorney, Professor Wheeler has broad experience litigating federal class actions, Medicaid appeals, state criminal trials, and civil law disputes.

Professor Wheeler earned a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees from the University of South Florida. He received his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Education

J.D., University of Florida Levin College of Law
M.B.A., University of South Florida
M.S., University of South Florida
B.A., University of South Florida (Economics)

Courses

Health Law: Health Equity and Patients’ Rights
Poverty Law
Poverty, Health, and Law (Seminar)

Publications

  • EPSDT Rulemaking: Updating an Outdated Federal Regulation to Protect Children’s Health, 82 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. _ (forthcoming 2026)
  • From Margins to Center: Elevating the Voices of Disadvantaged Families in Child Welfare, 26 Marq. Ben. & Soc. Welfare L. Rev. 1 (forthcoming 2025) (essay)
  • Breaking Bias: A Singular Chapter Solution For Racial Equity In Consumer Bankruptcy, 21 Hastings Race & Poverty L.J. 239 (2024)
  • Defunding C.O.P.S.: Conditioning Federal Funding to State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies upon the Implementation of a Program That Screens Its Current and Future Officers for White Supremacist Affiliations, 23 U. Md. L.J. Race, Religion, Gender & Class 1 (2023)