The courts are destroying America's ability to fight pandemics

[Nevilledog]

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Ian Millhiser
@imillhiser
I wrote about how right-wing judges are permanently dismantling much of America's ability to fight pandemics and protect public health.

The courts are destroying America’s ability to fight pandemics
Public health crises require a dynamic government that makes quick decisions. GOP judges want to prevent that.
vox.com
10:31 AM · Jul 27, 2021

https://www.vox.com/2021/7/27/22594374/courts-covid-delta-pandemic-supreme-court-brett-kavanaugh-public-health-destroy

Imagine if, in the spring of 2020, Wisconsin’s public health agencies had needed to get permission from the state’s heavily gerrymandered, GOP-controlled legislature before they could implement policies intended to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

That’s the sort of future that a raft of recent court decisions, including two handed down last Friday, could be setting the country up for — one where the government has limited ability to fight this pandemic and any others that arise.

The first court decision, written by a Donald Trump appointee to the United States Courts of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, imposes strict limits on California’s ability to close down in-person instruction at private schools. Judge Daniel Collins’s opinion in Branch v. Newsom claims that such restrictions run afoul of parents’ rights to “to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.”

(All of the relevant schools in Branch are currently allowed to hold in-person classes, but the Ninth Circuit’s order prevents California from imposing many new restrictions even if the pandemic worsens and public health officials believe that they need limit in-person gatherings to prevent outbreaks.)

*snip*

[Kaleva]

1. I don't think the courts were much help in fighting the Spanish Flu pandemic either.

[rickyhall]

2. We're learning what conservative judges are good for and it ain't much.

[KT2000]

3. Get this issue into the courts

as a toxic case. The Daubert standard would stand up against the delusions that have greater rights in the GOP. A pandemic is indeed a toxic case in my mind.

[Zeitghost]

4. Judges don't make decisions based on public health

They rule on the law. If a law is bad public policy that impedes public health, then the law needs to be changed. If the politicians in charge won't change the law, the voters need to toss them aside.

[Klaralven]

5. The legal profession is the basis for American political system

The theory is that the truth can be discerned by 12 naïve persons exposed to two competing lines of bullshit.