Amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump and his allies have frequently prioritized economic concerns. To that end, the Trump team has been advocating for reopening the economy via lifting the social distancing measures that have been enacted in attempts to stem the spread of the Coronavirus. This past week, Attorney General Bill Barr issued a memo to each and every U.S. attorney around the country admonishing them to be “on the lookout” for cases where social distancing-oriented measures supposedly trample civil liberties. In a new piece, legal expert Philip Rotner explained how Barr’s push could easily constitute an abuse of power on his part in service of Trump’s political ambitions.
In short, the social distancing guidelines that are in place are not some kind of nefarious plot against liberty. They’re basic public health measures designed to keep people alive. And in at least some regards, they’ve seemingly been at least partially effective in terms of keeping the tolls of the Coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. from reaching even worse levels. But Trump and Barr have been clamoring against the measures anyway.
Rotner notes that although “precisely targeted challenges to obviously abusive state restrictions of constitutional rights that have no relation to slowing the spread of the coronavirus would be a proper exercise of federal authority,” that’s not quite the direction that Barr is going. Rotner adds:
‘[Simply] substituting Barr’s judgment for that of state governors and local authorities on precisely how far it is wise to go to protect health and safety within a given state or community would be an abuse of power on the part of the attorney general. It would be, on its face, using the government’s law enforcement power to support the political agenda of an incumbent president seeking reelection.’
At issue here is the question of defining the vague idea of when a social distancing measure really goes “too far.” Who should be the arbiter of that? Barr? Bill Barr would no doubt prioritize the political interests of Donald Trump. He’s done it plenty of times already.
The U.S. Supreme Court, Rotner notes, has established that the government may temporarily supersede other civil liberties concerns with efforts to protect public health. A line in the opinion from that case, called Jacobson v. Massachusetts, is particularly relevant. The court insisted:
‘The right to practice religion freely does not include the liberty to expose the community… to communicable disease.’
Barr has specifically singled out religious institutions for support against the allegedly rights-threatening potentials of stay-at-home orders that have been in place around the country. The Department of Justice, for instance, filed a so-called statement of interest in a recent court case involving a church that had been temporarily prohibited from holding drive-in church services. And in his recent memo to U.S. Attorneys, Barr specifically singled out religious institutions for special attention.
Tens of thousands of Americans have died from the Coronavirus, and well over one million cases have been confirmed in the U.S., but none of that has stopped Trump and Barr from pursuing their political agendas anyway.
