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| Jonathan Ernst/Reuters |
Justice Neil Gorsuch has penned a passionate polemic against the emergency powers that were widely used during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that while they may have solved some problems, they created many others.
Gorsuch’s statement came in the Supreme Court’s final word on the effort of a group of states to challenge the end of Title 42, which allowed migrants to be expelled on public-health grounds. Last December, the conservative justices blocked the administration from lifting Title 42 and scheduled oral arguments. However, the justices removed the case from the argument calendar in February after the Biden administration announced it planned to end the Covid-19 national emergency. The justices closed the book on the case Thursday, days after Title 42 expired.
Gorsuch dissented in December and was relieved at the Supreme Court’s decision to render the case moot. He wrote that he does not discount the concerns of states like Arizona, a party in the case, about what is happening at the border. However, he said, “the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis.”
According to Gorsuch, the states attempted “to manipulate our docket to prolong an emergency decree designed for one crisis in order to address an entirely different one,” adding that the Court took a serious misstep in granting certiorari in December.
But for the justice, Title 42 was only one part of a much larger problem of emergency powers being misused. --->READ MORE HERE
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"Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country," Gorsuch wrote. That might be an exaggeration, but it isn't far off.
Justice Neil Gorsuch says all three branches of government share some of the blame for what he calls the "breathtaking scale" of emergency powers wielded by public officials during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"While executive officials issued new emergency decrees at a furious pace, state legislatures and Congress—the bodies normally responsible for adopting our laws—too often fell silent," Gorsuch wrote. "Courts bound to protect our liberties addressed a few—but hardly all—of the intrusions upon them."
Gorsuch's sweeping and powerful statement was attached to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Arizona v. Mayorkas, one of several cases dealing with the Title 42 orders that allowed federal immigration authorities to expel migrants seeking asylum in the United States. Title 42 had been invoked by former President Donald Trump as the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, and it was repeatedly extended by both Trump and President Joe Biden before finally being brought to an end last week.
But Title 42 was just one in a litany of COVID-related emergency powers that drew Gorsuch's ire.
"Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale," Gorsuch wrote before rattling off a list that included stay-at-home orders, school closures, attendance limits on churches, a federal ban on evictions, and the Biden administration's attempt (blocked by the Supreme Court) to impose a national vaccine mandate via a federal workplace safety regulator.
As some Gorsuch critics have been quick to point out on Twitter, it might be a bit of an exaggeration to call this the "greatest" attack on civil liberties in American history. There are unfortunately more than a few other contenders for that ignominious crown: slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. All were, like COVID-19 emergency powers, the result of legal exercises of state power that violated basic civil rights. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
COVID emergency orders are among `greatest intrusions on civil liberties,’ Justice Gorsuch says
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