Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch releases excoriating review of COVID lockdown policies, including business closures and vaccination mandates, calling them “among the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the history of the nation”
- Judge Neil Gorsuch called the avalanche of lockdowns imposed during the pandemic ‘the greatest intrusions on civil liberties’
- He said leaders at the state and federal levels had issued emergency executive orders ‘on a mind-boggling scale’
- Congress and state legislatures have ‘too often been silent’ as strict rules were established, he added.
A Supreme Court justice called the spate of covid lockdown measures imposed across America “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country”.
Judge Neil Gorsuch delivered an excoriating review of restrictions applied at the state and federal levels by executive officials.
In a statement written as part of a Supreme Court case involving Title 42, Gorsuch said emergency executive orders have been issued during the pandemic “on a mind-boggling scale.”
“Governors and local leaders have imposed lockdown orders requiring people to stay at home. They closed businesses and schools, public and private,” he wrote.
“They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to continue. They threatened violators not only with civil penalties, but also with criminal penalties.
Judge Neil Gorsuch delivered an excoriating review of restrictions applied at the state and federal levels by executive officials
Many businesses were forced to close as authorities tried to stop the spread of covid – but the extreme measures represented some of the ‘greatest intrusions on civil liberties’ in US history, a judge has heard of the Supreme Court. Pictured: A closed business in New York
Judge Gorsuch also referred to vaccination warrants and firing threats for workers who refused the shot
The judge, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump in 2017, gave examples of how authorities “monitored church parking lots, recorded license plates and issued notices warning that even church attendance outside services met all state requirements for social distancing and sanitation. could amount to criminal conduct”.
He explained how “federal executive branch officials also got in on the act” through vaccination warrants that included firing threats for employees and service members who refused.
“Along the way, it appears that federal authorities pressured social media companies to remove information about pandemic policies that they disagreed with,” Gorsuch added.
Emergency executive orders have been issued “at a frantic pace” while Congress and state legislatures “have gone silent too often.”
The statement was filed as the Supreme Court dismissed a case brought by Republican states seeking to uphold the Title 42 public health policy that allowed the United States to refuse asylum seekers during the pandemic.
Schools have also been closed across the country, hurting children’s education. Pictured: A student attends an online class from home in Miami, Florida, US, Thursday September 3, 2020
A closed school building in New York on November 19, 2020
The justices said the case was moot because Title 42 was due to expire anyway after the Biden administration announced the public health emergency would end on May 11.
Referring to the broader issue of strict lockdown policies during the pandemic, Gorsuch added: “Undoubtedly, many lessons can be learned from this chapter in our history, and I hope that serious efforts will be made to improve it. ‘to study.
“A lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for security are powerful forces. They can lead to a demand for action – almost any action – as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.
“A leader or expert who claims they can fix anything, if only we do exactly what they say, can be an irresistible force.”
He concluded: “Make no mistake, decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But while the emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others.
“And governing by indefinite emergency decree risks leaving us all with a shell of equally hollow democracy and civil liberties.”
