May 20, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has dismissed a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.
Justice Neil Gorsuch had much more to say and harshly criticized how governments, from the smallest to those in the nation’s capital, have responded to the greatest serious public health risk in a century.
The judge, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, called the emergency measures taken by the COVID-19 crisis that has killed more than a million Americans “the greatest intrusions into peacetime civil liberties in this country. “history. “
He pointed to the final orders of schools, the restriction of services, the mandatory nature of vaccinations and the prohibition of expulsions. His crusade targeted local, state and federal officials, including his colleagues.
“Executive officials across the country have issued emergency executive orders on an impressive scale,” Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page document Thursday accompanying an expected Supreme Court order officially dismissing a case related to the use of the Title 42 policy to save asylum seekers. to enter the country. United States.
The ended last week with the expiration of the public fitness emergency first declared more than 3 years ago due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Since beginning his term on the Supreme Court in 2017, Gorsuch, a Colorado resident who enjoys skiing and biking, has been more willing than top justices to combine tactics with his colleagues, whether left or right.
He typically voted with other conservatives during his six years as a judge, joining the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade. Wade and expanded gun rights last year.
But he charted another course on some issues, drafting the 2020 court opinion that extended federal protections against discrimination of LGBTQ people. He also joined liberal judges in supporting Native American rights.
When the omicron variant first appeared in late 2021 and early 2022, Gorsuch was the only one who judged that he appeared in the courtroom without a mask, though his sitting mate, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who suffers from diabetes, allegedly felt insecure around other people. who were not dressed in masks.
So Sotomayor, who continues to wear a mask in public, took the bench with the other justices in January 2022. Both judges denied reports that they disagreed on the issue.
The emergency orders Gorsuch complained about were first announced in the early days of the pandemic, when President Trump, and months before the virus was well understood and a vaccine developed.
The essence of his complaint is not new. In the past, he has written in individual instances that have gone to court over the pandemic, infrequently opposing orders left behind by emergency orders in place.
Judges have intervened in COVID-related cases.
With Gorsuch and five other conservatives in the majority, they ended the moratorium on evictions and blocked a Biden management plan to require staff at large companies to get vaccinated or wear a mask and undergo normal testing. Once Amy Coney Barrett joined the court, after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, restrictions on devotees in some areas were lifted.
In a 5-4 vote that Gorsuch and 3 conservative colleagues disagreed with, the court allowed management to require that many physical care be vaccinated.
But on Thursday, Gorsuch piled his court cases in one place, writing about the classes he hoped to learn about over the past three years.
“One lesson can be simply this: concern and preference for safety are strong forces. They can lead to a request for action, almost any action, as long as someone is doing something to deal with a perceived threat. A leader or expert who claims he can fix everything, if we just do exactly what he says, can become an impossible force to resist,” he wrote.
Another conceivable lesson, he writes: “The concentration of force in the hands of a few can be effective and rarely popular. But this does not have a tendency towards healthy government.
He also had strong words for Republican-led states that tried to keep the Title 42 policy in place, and the five conservative justices whose votes dragged the policy for five months beyond the date it would otherwise have ended last December.
“At the very least, the judiciary will not allow itself to become part of the challenge anytime soon by allowing litigants to manipulate our role to perpetuate an executive order designed to make one emergency deal with another,” Gorsuch wrote.
In the last paragraph of his statement, Gorsuch acknowledged, albeit reluctantly, that emergency orders are mandatory. “Make no mistake, decisive executive action is mandatory and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others. “he wrote.
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