No Matter How You Feel About Masks, You Should Be Alarmed by This Judge’s Decision
- Thread starter cigaretteman
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Don’t forget Riley was the guy who flew to California at the height of the pandemic, then told everyone it was safe because planes have great air filtration.
First, Yeah, just because there's an emergency that doesn't mean we put the constitution on hold. There's no pause button on freedom.
Second, emergencies have an end. I, like pretty much everyone else was willing to temporally cede a few freedoms and liberties in the face of an emergency, but if after 2 years we're still in an "emergency" status, the people charged with dealing with the emergency have failed full cloth.
Isn't this the same judge that the ABA said was totally unqualified for the position? Just another late Trump addition to his kangaroo courts. We can probably thank Moscow Mitch too.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
yeah, i'm no expert or anything, but the polarization of politics is well illustrated here. Now don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure they're all grade A dooshbags on both sides of the isle, but what is gained by associating Mitch McConnell or anyone else in this?
He controlled the Senate at that time and its judicial approval process. Remember when Trump would brag about the number of judicial openings he had filled?
Mitch was behind that. He even rammed through SCOTUS judge Barrett's nomination right before the 2020 election, breaking his own "rules" in the process.
Your broader point is of course correct -- our worst constitutional decisions (eg, Korematsu) have generally entailed situations where we put the constitution on hold in the interest of exigent circumstances.
But with that said, let's be clear here -- the question is not whether Congress has made "any" authorization to the CDC to deal with public health crises. It has. The question is whether that authorization has been specific enough for your and others' liking. That's a very fair question, because at the end of the day you want the politically accountable branches being the ones to make the tough policy calls that balance the broader needs of the society, rather than leaving the question to a single agency's unelected technocrats who tend to be navel gazing while managing a single issue and who, frankly, as bureaucrats tend to operate out of fear rather than courage. We actually do need liberal arts majors (good ones) who are "political" to make these sorts of calls. But on that front, it's also important to recognize that the existing caselaw doesn't really require a lot of specificity -- nondelegation doctrine has largely been a dead letter for decades and only recently been resurrected (rightfully, in my opinion) in what they now call the "major questions" doctrine. The district judge's decision was by no means crazy, but it was way too far out over her skis for a trial judge.
You're also right about the dangers of "states of emergency". They tend to linger --for example, did you know that Truman's Korean War emergency proclamation did not expire until 1978? That's the one, btw, that he used to try to take control of the steel industry, and the Steel Seizure cases perfectly illustrated how the court is capable of dealing with those sorts of dangers. Personally, I think we're well within the duration of reasonableness with respect to the covid emergency - there's still some work to do.
Due to her only having 8 years of experience vs 12 years. They also noted she has a very keen intellect, strong work ethic and an impressive resume.
I also have those same traits, but unfortunately not enough experience.
You continue to bring up this lie, with a different twist each time. It's what you do.
Through our laws we give authority to officials to take action for the overall good.
Again, who decides when the emergency is over? You? SMFH
The CDC doesn't have the power to declare a state of emergency. The President does. And, Congress then has the power by joint resolution to terminate the declaration.
authority to officials yes... the CDC are not officials, they're no one, they're you with a spot on cable news... and if I don't care what they think on the matter, just imagine how much I care what you think...
Masks don't work, idiot bag. Shut up with this stupid line already.
its amazing to me how many people (not you) think well if everyone wore a mask or everyone did this or did that MY useless waste of time would work better. Do masks work? Do the vaccines work? The data whether its cases, deaths, hospitalizations, whatever metric you want to review, they're all WORSE after the vaccines.
The consensus of other experts. At some point we have to have a knowledgeable authority that directs us. Otherwise there is chaos.
FFS - they are THE authority on public health matters in our country. And officials who care about the people of our country listen to these types of authorities. Not some jackwagon anti-government imbeciles.
You're a goddamned idiot. JFC. No sense wasting any more time on your ignorance.
I'd tell them they shouldn't have been over 80 or should have lived a healthier lifestyle.. or I'd tell them shit happens.
They would have died from practically any illness at their age and level of health.
They just helped extend the viability of social security benefits for one more year.
You are consistently wrong. And you lie. Not a good combination.
You honestly think at the border they were doing tests and if you were positive you were turned away??
According to Homeland Security, yes.
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You're funny. Do you still believe in the tooth fairy? Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Thousands are flowing through every day that don't get caught, therefore there's obviously no test for them either.
That’s okay. I know you have reading comprehension issues. Are immigrants at the border being tested? Yes. Of course illegals aren’t being tested. Still wondering where all the illegals dumped in Florida are?
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Strange isn't it. Wonder how all these people still believe? Could it be what they listen too????
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