Typical lib response when they lose an argument.
No Matter How You Feel About Masks, You Should Be Alarmed by This Judge’s Decision
- Thread starter cigaretteman
- Start date
Cdc should give guidelines . Those guidelines should be followed but if they become no longer relevant, a mechanism to disregard should be in place. You know like commonsense. Hard for a lib like you to understand. Dems are the party of no commonsense. Cancel Thomas Jefferson. Lol
So if masks did stop COVID does the CDC have statutory authority over airline travel?
It’s a good ruling because the CDC is a faceless bureaucratic monstrosity that is unaccountable to the voters, so they wisely have no legal authority to declare a lockdown or limit a citizen’s travel or in other other way restrict our liberty.
If you guys want to be ruled by federal bureaucrats you are signing up for a dystopian communist hell hole. This is not China (yet).
I am very pro mask while flying. But I am always sipping water so I don’t wear one.
see how easy it is.
see how easy it is.
As I said at the time of the ruling, this is the important question.
If it's decided that government can't act in the nation's perceived best interest during a crisis, what's the point of government?
The answer is still no. The CDC or any bureaucrat should have no authority over what any American does.
What's the crisis? Covid never was/is/or will be a crisis.
Like democracy itself, our judicial system is dangerously damaged.
How can we fix these things when one party and many corporate and other concentrations of power like it this way?
How can we fix these things when one party and many corporate and other concentrations of power like it this way?
But it's OK for one non elected official to make that decision for 365+ million people. You people are so .................By Lawrence Gostin and Duncan Hosie
Mr. Gostin is a professor of global health law at Georgetown Law and the faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Mr. Hosie is a writer and civil rights lawyer.
Should the federal government have the power to address broad public health emergencies?
Last week, a federal judge effectively answered no.
The judge, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who serves on a Federal District Court in Florida and was appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued a nationwide injunction blocking the government’s mask mandate for planes, trains, buses and other forms of public transportation.
No matter how you feel now about masks, you should be alarmed by her decision. Judge Mizelle’s ruling could prevent the federal government from effectively and nimbly responding to future pandemics. And long after this pandemic has faded, her approach and rationale could undermine the federal government’s authority to confront other big problems, from occupational health and safety to climate change.
The Biden administration has appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, but that carries its own risks. Six of the 11 actives judges on that court are Trump appointees. A loss there by the Justice Department could permanently weaken the government’s authority to respond to health emergencies.
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Up until very recently, the statutory authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to try to curb the interstate or international transmission of an infectious, deadly disease was not in doubt. The Public Health Service Act authorizes the C.D.C. to “make and enforce such regulations” that in its “judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable diseases.”
The law provides that the C.D.C. can enforce “sanitation” and “other measures” to achieve this goal. The transportation mask requirement is crucial to the agency’s ability to meet its congressional mandate because travelers in a pandemic can unknowingly carry a virus across the country, dispersing it along the way.
Since the New Deal, federal courts have generally declined to strike down reasonable agency regulations. And for good reason. In writing laws, Congress cannot envision or micromanage every possible scenario. Unexpected events — say, perhaps, a global public health crisis — create novel challenges. So, Congress delegates rule-making power to agencies, which develop and issue evidence-based regulations to combat complex problems.
Agencies do not have, nor should they have, unfettered authority to act, but courts should defer to their reasonable interpretations of federal law. In this case, Congress delegated powers to the C.D.C., a scientific agency charged with protecting the nation’s health.
Judge Mizelle’s opinion rejects this longstanding consensus over the way government works. Adopting a strained and tendentious reading of the word “sanitation,” she concluded that the C.D.C. exceeded its legal authority. In her view, it was untenable that the “C.D.C. claims a power to regulate how individuals behave in such diverse places as airplanes, train stations, marinas and personal vehicles used in ride-sharing services across town.”
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In reality, the C.D.C. claims no power that Congress had not explicitly given it. An agency tasked with slowing the interstate spread of a highly infectious virus would regulate interstate travel, which occurs because “diverse places” like airplanes and train stations are often crowded, and passengers are confined for long periods of time.
Under Judge Mizelle’s logic, the agency would also have no authority under existing law to impose a mask mandate in a future pandemic — say if a new and more dangerous variant of the coronavirus strikes, as it might. It wouldn’t matter how deadly the future variant or pandemic was. Or how communicable the disease was in airplanes or trains. Or the effectiveness of masks in slowing spread. Or whether the pathogen evaded vaccines. Her peculiar reading of the statute restricts the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to a future health crisis, handcuffing it when the agency is most needed.
Judge Mizelle lacks experience or expertise in public health. The C.D.C., conversely, is staffed by virologists, epidemiologists and other highly respected scientists accountable to the president, who in turn can be held to account by the public. A constitutional democracy is challenged when a lone judge, lacking competence in public health, can unilaterally dismantle a nationwide public health policy during a crisis. We can’t think of a worse way for Covid-era masking to end than at the hand of a single federal judge sitting in the Middle District of Florida.
Judge Mizelle is among a cadre of Trump appointees to the federal bench who are using the foil of pandemic public health regulations to dismantle the national government’s legal authority to solve problems. They have sought to change underlying principles of administrative law, limiting the type of regulations that agencies can create and letting individual judges substitute their policy views for agencies’ reasoned interpretations. Their push includes eliminating the legal doctrine of Chevron deference, laid out in a unanimous 1984 Supreme Court decision that gives federal agencies leeway when interpreting ambiguous or unclear laws.
This campaign starts at the top, with a Supreme Court transformed by Mr. Trump’s three appointments. In August 2021, as the Delta variant surged, the Supreme Court blocked the C.D.C. from enforcing a federal eviction moratorium, which was intended to prevent mass evictions and keep people out of congregate settings where Covid spreads most easily. In January, as the Omicron variant strained hospitals across the country, the Supreme Court barred the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from imposing a vaccination-or-test requirement for large employers.
In these decisions and others, the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices have displayed a blasé disregard for precedents and the exigencies of a deadly pandemic, which had killed nearly one million Americans as of late last week.
The Justice Department’s decision to appeal Judge Mizelle’s decision was welcome news. The C.D.C. must have the legal authority to protect public health. But should the appellate court uphold her ruling, the C.D.C. will be seriously hobbled and a ruinous precedent will be set for the entire federal regulatory apparatus. Worse, the Supreme Court might review the case and use it as part of its larger crusade to deconstruct the administrative state.
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This fracas over masking in public transportation will eventually fade. But decisions like Judge Mizelle’s could remain law, burdening agencies and restricting the scope of policymaking. That should trouble Americans who want a government that can protect them in future pandemics — or to take action to address any hard problem that threatens their health, safety and security.
Opinion | No Matter How You Feel About Masks, You Should Be Alarmed by This Judge’s Decision
The ruling could prevent the federal government from nimbly responding to future pandemics.www.nytimes.com
Do our elected representatives have any responsibility, or is their only job to provide cable news blood sport and enrich themselves with insider trading?
COVID is a perfect example of how states are better suited for this anyways. The idea that Wyoming and New Jersey should have the same COVID policy has always been dumb.
Let's give the non elected flip/flopper Fauci the suitcase to the bombs too.
Who decides whether those guidelines are still "relevant"? And whoever that is, can they mandate that the guidelines be followed?
Along those same lines - do you support smoking bans?
You didn't. I understand why. It's just fun watching you squirm.
According to who? Certainly not the experts on pandemics.
Do you support smoking bans?
So you believe smoking bans on airplanes, in restaurants, and other public buildings should be abolished? That anyone should be allowed to smoke wherever they want?
How about speed limits? Do you oppose those as well?
I could sure be wrong on this, but the CDC doesn't have the authority to mandate anything, do they? Don't they make recommendations and Congress than takes those and makes it law (like the previous mass transit and airport mask mandates).
I am. The CDC can make recommendations but should never, NEVER, have that kind of authority.
If the POTUS wants to follow their recommendations and issue these dumbass type of things then so be it. But never a governmental agency.
Like you avoided mine? What on earth makes you think the CDC should decide to pause the lockdown in order to let you go protest? Why do you think that’s remotely ok?
I didn't know the CDC set speed limits...driving down a residential street going 80 mph is not the same thing as going to Walmart without a mask isn't even close to being the same thing. Smoking sections in restaurants and on planes never bothered me like I said. Forcing people to wear masks in a setting where masks are not effective for an illness where 100% of healthy people survive is patently absurd. We, and by we I mean the American people, let covid become a crisis when in fact it never was.
Ugh. The mandate can come from another authority - it doesn't have to be a law. The point is whether a government entity should have the power to issue a mask mandate and/or quarantine for public safety.
You are the idiot if you think any government agency should have that kind of power.
They didn't. You make shit up and are the biggest dupe on here. JFC.
So never should a governmental entity have the power to issue a mandate or quarantine for public safety purposes? Really?
Do you believe the smoking bans should be repealed as well?
JFC you dumb**** - it's about a government entity issuing mandates and laws for the safety of the constituency. Do you believe the government should have that power or not? Clearly you want smokers to be able to light up wherever they want. I'm wondering how far that nonsense goes.
This is exactly why we needed a Federal response.
I don’t think there should be smoking bans but you are conflating separate issues. The smoking ban at least happened the correct way, a law was passed and signed.
I have issues with a Governor or President being able to issue mandates of any kind. But in extreme circumstances it is justified.
The problem is all these people are drunk on power and don’t know when to stop the mandates. The Covid mandates should have ended months ago. Now they’re simply playing politics by trying to leave them in place.
Triggered are we? To the extent the government ruled our lives during this so-called health crisis should not be allowed. Government has all sorts of input and laws related to public safety. The issue is the power they assumed over the pandemic is unprecedented and should not have happened. Stop comparing smoking laws to a government overreach regarding covid.
Most smoking bans were done state by state. California was first and there are big differences among state laws regarding smoking. I'm sure there is an overall law regarding federal buildings and airports.
Lol - so sometimes mandates are OK, if it's extreme enough. Who determines what is extreme enough?
Smoking bans started before laws were passed, BTW.
What conspiracy is that? That you don’t pay attention to shit when it happens? I’d call that a stone cold Truth if you are saying the CDC didn’t do that. Hint: I posted an article about it in this thread.
