There’s no doubt the Biden administration has abused its power. Now they’re feeling the heat.
Because the Supreme Court issued this scathing order to Joe Biden.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch used a declaration in a case over the Title 42 public health order to provide a critical review of how civil liberties were violated during the COVID era — and the lessons that America can learn from it.
“One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat,” the justice wrote.
“A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force. We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree.”
Gorsuch was writing as the Supreme Court dismissed a pending case over the termination of the Title 42 public health order, which was used to expedite the deportation of migrants at the southern border between March 2020 and May of this year. It came to an end with the end of the COVID-19 national emergency.
While Gorsuch focused on the legal wrangling that had followed Title 42, he then turned his attention to the pandemic’s overall response, writing that the case “illustrates the disruption we have experienced over the last three years in how our laws are made and our freedoms are observed.”
He then provided examples of how the United States may have “experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in this country’s peacetime history.”
“Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too,” he continued.
“They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent,” he said.
At the federal level, he emphasized not only immigration decrees but also vaccine mandates, landlord-tenant relations regulation, and pressure on social media corporations to remove “misinformation.”
He then even turned the spotlight on the courts: “In some cases, like this one, courts even allowed themselves to be used to perpetuate emergency public-health decrees for collateral purposes, itself a form of emergency-lawmaking-by-litigation.”
He said that another lesson from the pandemic is: “The concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government.”
Gorsuch’s attack on the power-hungry elite’s attempts to take over American’s lives during the COVID pandemic is laudable.
But his application of the principle to Title 42 is little misguided at best.
During the pandemic, Trump used Title 42 to defend our border not only from illegal immigrants with COVID, but also drug cartels with weapons and deadly drugs.
Though his excoriation of would-be dictators using COVID to control American citizens’ lives is correct, it does not logically extend to non-citizens.
Are Americans somehow losing their rights because they dare to enforce our national border and sovereignty?
While Biden, Cuomo, Fauci, and all of their ilk deserve derision for trying to co-opt our lives, Trump does not for trying to enforce our laws.
Stay tuned to DC Daily Journal.
