They really do not like the notion of the People fighting for their freedom
‘It’s a tsunami’: Legal challenges threatening public health policy
Court battles over Covid-19 safety measures and recent court rulings will impact the government’s ability to keep Americans safe, experts warn.
Mounting legal challenges to pandemic public health rules — and judges’ increasing willingness to overrule medical experts — threaten to erode the influence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government health authorities.
In the last year, four court rulings against the CDC, including one from the Supreme Court, have forced the agency to stop or change its pandemic mitigation orders. Most recently, a Florida district judge ordered a national injunction ending the agency’s mask mandate on public transport.
“Litigation invites litigation invites litigation,” said Wendy Parmet, faculty co-director at the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University. It’s a cycle that “creates enormous uncertainty about what CDC could do going forward should the pandemic worsen again, or should another pandemic or even a more regional outbreak arise.”
The high-profile challenges to the CDC sit atop thousands more lawsuits against state and local health authorities that have been filed during the pandemic, experts say, seeking to end localized social distancing and mask orders, vaccine mandates and business closures.
The vast majority of these lawsuits are aimed at state, local, and federal Executive branches, as they were the ones implementing all sorts of restrictions on their own without legislation from the duly elected legislative branch. Or using barely related or un-related legislation passed long ago to take on new powers.
The constant threat of being dragged into court is having a chilling effect on local health officials that may last well beyond the Covid-19 crisis, leading health commissioners or board of health members to think twice about enacting public safety measures.
“It’s a tsunami,” says James Hodge, a law professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. “Anything that limits you as an American from doing something you don’t want to do … It all got a challenge.”
The flood of legal challenges is part of a profound antagonism many in the U.S. have felt toward public health officials since the early days of the pandemic, when the rapid spread of Covid-19 put government authority and America’s fierce defense of individual freedoms on a collision course.
Well, gee, who would have thought that Americans would be averse to having the government put restrictions on their lives, especially when we see the politicians and elites not doing the same? When the rules seem arbitrary and capricious? When they make no sense and really do not help in stopping COVID? When they seem to want to keep them just for the sake of keeping them, while excluding themselves?
Political meddling in the CDC’s Covid-19 response and the agency’s own unforced errors in testing and communication stiffened many Americans’ resistance to the government’s involvement in their personal health, even as nearly one million Americans have died. In addition to lawsuits, bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the nation to limit public health authorities’ power, and scores of public health officials have left their jobs in frustration.
Well, let them leave. They are not rulers. They aren’t dictators. We have laws, and we have a federal Constitution, alone with state constitutions. What they, and all the politicians using mandates (mostly Democrats, with a smattering of Republicans), are upset is that they will have a tough time slapping more restrictions on the lives of ordinary citizens.
In Washington state, Secretary of Health Umair Shah says this litigious atmosphere, and particularly a decision like the Florida injunction against the CDC’s travel mask mandate, “has ramifications for public health policy across the nation.”
He says it’s part of a broader landscape of “anger and vehemence” against public health officials and public health policies that is making it harder for them to do their jobs.
People get rather angry when the government implements mandates that negatively affect their lives and businesses. Their earnings. Especially when the mandates do not work. How well did masking work? We knew the masking was foolish from the beginning. We knew it wouldn’t work. Yet, there were all the mandates, which the politicians and elites blew off themselves. There would be little reason for all the lawsuits if government didn’t overreach. Sure, in the first couple of months it is understandable with most freaking, citizens and politicians. We had a pretty good idea within a few months of what needed to be done, but, the Powers That Be wanted their power.
Read: Authoritarians Seem Upset Over All The COVID Lawsuits »
There is a 50% chance that, during the next five years, the global average surface temperature will exceed 1.5°C above the preindustrial average for the first time in an individual year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported Monday.
With the Supreme Court poised to overturn its 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in the United States, an activist who describes herself as a “pro-life feminist” believes that the country is not ready for such a change.
“You don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline.”
Food prices around the world have soared to record levels this year as the Russia-Ukraine war slashes key exports of wheat and fertilizer from those countries, at the same time as droughts, floods and heat fueled by climate change claim more harvests.
When Barbara Schwartz looks back at her younger days working as a Broadway stagehand, she remembers the electricity of it: the harried dancers slipping into their costumes backstage, the props people shoving past with flashlights between their teeth.
