violations all over the US- any bets on how many lawsuits get filed?
By Jeff Mordock - The Washington Times - Monday, April 27, 2020
Attorney General William Barr on Monday ordered federal prosecutors across the country to consider legal action against governors if their efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus infringe on Americans’ civil rights.
In a two-page memo, Mr. Barr directed all U.S. attorneys to “be on the lookout” for local and state directives that could violate religious, free speech or economic rights under the Constitution.
“If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID-19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court,” Mr. Barr wrote in a memo to the 93 U.S. attorneys. Mr. Barr also directed Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Eric Dreiband and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Matthew Schneider to monitor state and local policies for potential violations.
The two officials will work with state and local governments as well as other federal agencies, according to the memo. They will be on the alert for coronavirus response policies that restrict free speech or religious liberty as well as other constitutional rights.
Read more at Washington Times
They’ll look into it, and 3 years from now say some mistakes were made, and send a letter to those states.
Prove me wrong.
Pretty much everything they have been doing.
Millions will be spent and some janitor in the state house will go to Prison.
only a moron believes any of this
It’s a fairly straigh-forward type of litigation where the US attorney can file an emergency injunction, denying state’s rules which violate the constitution. The orders by governors can be voided if they conflict with the constitution, and likely the easiest way is to invoke the commerce clause, where governors are interfering with interstate commerce. Any US attorney who has a law degree should be able to sail an injunction through a federal court.
“Bagpipes Bob” is ALL SHOW and NO GO!
It will scare some into re-opening, just to cover their butts.
Even if they don’t actually get prosecuted personally, it might make them look bad during the election - which could be enough to influence behavior.
I don’t know if Barr has been sleeping or what but there already have been many violations. Freedom of assembly and freedom to worship to name a few. Wake up!
"be on the lookout"?
"could be violating"?
Uhhhhh…..open your eyes Bagpipes. And where have you and your Dept of Injustice bureaucrats been while states and city mayors have run roughshod over the Constitution for over a month?
And thanks for nothing, once again.
I expect Barr to be as effective in this endeavor as he was in concluding that Epstein committed "suicide."
'Nothing' to indicate Epstein death was not a suicide: Attorney General William Barr
What a joke. Is he going to clean out his own cesspool of a department?
Cherchez la Comey.
The conundrum here is that every order issued at the state and local level during this emergency would be unconstitutional during normal times.
Every single one.
Yet there is a wealth of precedent for such restriction of liberty through our history, even reaching back to English common law.
This begs the question: Is Barr going to prosecute every one of these jurisdictions? Or, is he going to allow a continuous gray to dominate black and white law?
Hell, that’s no law at all. That’s the rule of man.
We could see a McDonalds free to open in one town, yet DOJ looking the other way when a home hairdresser is jailed in another.
Our Founding Fathers designed check and balances. They designed an INEFFICIENT GOVERNEMENT.
Our government is way to efficient and many here want it to be efficient.
Words have meaning. look them up. Do we want an effective and efficient government? Maybe yes, maybe no?
ping
A year from today the MSM will be screaming that the Trump administration ruined the economy.