Elderly NM Man HAS TO SUE THE STATE To Touch His Wife, Who Is In Same Nursing Facility

MRCTV ^ | January. 5. 2021 | P. Gardner Goldsmith

[george76]

A shocking COVID-19 Crackdown story has emerged from New Mexico to remind us that injustice is an immortal human-created monster that always should be exposed and fought.

According to New Mexico based WISNews10 and KOAT, 78-year-old Gary Hein had to sue his state-run nursing home system and its overlord, the New Mexico Department of Health, just so he and his own wife could embrace.

Hein and his spouse, 80-year-old Ann Severine, have been together for over three decades. Gary resides in the “Independent Living” portion of his Santa Fe nursing facility while Ann, who suffers from dementia, lives in the “Memory Care” section.

And, thanks to authoritarian government “lockdown” orders from the COVID-obsessed Democrat Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and her bureaucracy, the two have been prevented from meeting in person to supposedly protect them from the virus. Ann -- a woman who shows a need for the affection of her own husband as she struggles to function under the pressure of memory loss – cannot even lean against her spouse, a man who used to visit her multiple times a day to care for his wife.

The story is as heartbreaking as it is infuriating - and it took a lawsuit brought by Gary himself to get the state to back off. As KOAT reports:

The loving husband took part in a lawsuit in which he claimed his constitutional rights were violated and both his health and that of his wife had declined. He said nursing home staff, even employees who had been exposed to COVID-19, were allowed near her, but he wasn’t, even though he’s repeatedly been tested for the virus.

And thankfully, the court ruled in favor of Gary. As The Santa Fe New Mexican’s Phaedra Haywood reports:

State District Judge Matthew Wilson on Monday ordered the secretary of the New Mexico Department of Health to strike the provision from the public health order and to revisit the order’s language with consideration for the constitutional rights of nursing home residents and their families.

Judge Wilson correctly determined the obvious:

’Loss of familial association for even minimal amounts of time constitutes irreparable injury,’ Wilson wrote in his ruling. ‘Nothing, such as video conferencing, is a substitute for in-person, physical contact with a loved one.’

That’s a breach of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

One wonders if Governor Grisham is familiar with them.

Curiously, both the Santa Fe New Mexican and KOAT report a most surprising aspect of the ruling…

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health declined to comment on the case Tuesday.

Judge Wilson appears to be one of the rare government officials who still recognizes the Bill of Rights. Like Grisham, most of the politicians issuing their lockdown edicts and commands about “social distancing” and “masks” and “quarantines”, and most of the state employees, either have not the faintest clue or not the faintest CARE about the rights of others. That is how this bureaucratized NM “nursing facility” system gets much of its funds – through the breach of Natural Rights called taxation.

Through government-committed theft.

Is it any wonder that it takes a lawsuit, and the luck of getting just ONE judge familiar with rights, to fight this kind of systemic injustice against vulnerable, elderly people?

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[eyeamok]

I hope when I am 80 I remember a Life Sentence for Murder isn’t that long.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Everything about the lockdowns, especially the masks, is meant to dehumanize us in preparation for what comes next.

[george76]

Never let a crisis go to waste.. ~democrat tyrants

[Flick Lives]

The old guy should have said he was recovering from Covid. I’m sure then the staff would have rushed him right into the memory care unit. At least that’s the way they roll in NY under Cuomo.