Counselor706
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2011
- Posts
- 2,665
SourceAs Justice Samuel Alito pointed out in a speech earlier this month, the pandemic has provided us a “constitutional stress test.” He worried that under the current circumstances,” religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.”
The justice made clear that he wasn’t “diminishing the severity of the virus’ threat to public health” or even “saying anything” about whether lockdown rules were “good public policy.” But he was pointing out that “the pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty” and that this had happened “by executive fiat rather than legislation.”
The unchecked growth of the administrative state and the rule of unaccountable “experts” long precede the appearance of the coronavirus. But what we have experienced in the last nine months is the sweeping away of legal norms that deserves more than a passing glance, even in the midst of a public emergency.
As in the Nevada case, the question before the courts is not whether states can take action to try to save lives in the midst of a public health emergency. Rather, it is whether politicians, emboldened by the conceit that they have now been given unlimited power by the panic over the pandemic, can exercise it not only in an arbitrary manner but also in a way that specifically discriminates against faith groups.