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Posted on 09/16/2020 5:48:28 AM PDT by karpov
‘The liberties protected by the Constitution are not fair-weather freedoms—in place when times are good but able to be cast aside in times of trouble.” So federal judge William Stickman IV wrote Monday in an instructive ruling that overturned Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s use of emergency power.
The decision comes nearly six months after Mr. Wolf invoked police powers to impose a strict lockdown as his strategy against Covid-19. Mr. Wolf argued the case is moot since he has relaxed his orders, but Judge Stickman noted that Mr. Wolf continues to assert that he can reinstate restrictions, as other governors have done amid virus flare-ups. Pennsylvanians still live under Mr. Wolf’s unilateral sword.
Republican legislators and several businesses argued the Governor’s emergency orders violate the First Amendment’s right to assemble and Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection and due process guarantees. Mr. Wolf claims his police powers are entitled to extraordinary judicial deference under the Supreme Court’s Jacobson (1905) precedent, which upheld Massachusetts’s smallpox vaccine mandate.
But as Judge Stickman wrote, “Jacobson was decided over a century ago. Since that time, there has been substantial development of federal constitutional law in the area of civil liberties. As a general matter, this development has seen a jurisprudential shift whereby federal courts have given greater deference to considerations of individual liberties, as weighed against the exercise of state police powers.”
The judge cited Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent this year from the Supreme Court’s Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak denial of injunctive relief: “It is a considerable stretch to read the [Jacobson] decision as establishing the test to be applied when statewide measures of indefinite duration are challenged under the First Amendment or other provisions not at issue in that case.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
A 41-year old rookie judge flies in the face of Supreme Court precedent.
He’s a brave man. Does not fill me with confidence about what happens on appeal though.
And nothing changes...Wolf is still a dictator.
“Mr. Wolf even participated in a Black Lives Matter protest that violated the letter of his own emergency order. By contrast, the plaintiffs weren’t allowed to hold campaign events exceeding the order’s limits, which Judge Stickman says violates their right to assemble.”
And as a result, he broke his oath of office to defend the constitution and the people of PA. Same goes for OR, MN, WA, MI, CA...
I think I understand now why hospitals over-report Covid-19 cases:
Add KY to your list.
Add ME to the list.
Early on I was flamed for stating that under no circumstances should the Bill of Rights be nullified. We'll see how John Roberts votes (we know how the other 8 will vote) but I'm not optimistic since I thought he already ruled that the Bill of Rights is no longer in force, at least in California.
Who is "he"? The judge or Comrade Governor?
Opens the door for more Trump campaign rallies
The Governor.
There’s no teeth in that unless the judge also issued punishment in the verdict. This throws it back to the legislature to fix the laws so there will not be future instances of these violations.
The PA Legislature is trying to make those fixes. In most cases they run up into Wolf’s veto and the GOP does not have a veto-proof majority.
There will be an amendment to the State Constitution on the ballot to restrict emergency powers of FUTURE governors.
Pennsylvania Ping!
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