Pandemic ruling: State not obligated to compensate business

The Associated Press ^ | June 7, 2021 | By MORGAN LEE

[Oldeconomybuyer]

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The state Supreme Court ruled Monday that there is no constitutional or statutory requirement to compensate businesses for financial losses due to emergency public health orders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ruling in favor of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham scuttles about 20 lawsuits against her administration.

The original plaintiffs argued that aggressive health restrictions from the administration constituted a regulatory taking much like the taking of land for public works projects. The governor urged the Supreme Court to block the lawsuits.

In a unanimous opinion from Justice Shannon Bacon, the court said that current public health orders “are a reasonable exercise of the police power to protect the public health.”

“Occupancy limits and closure of certain categories of businesses, while certainly harsh in their economic effects, are directly tied to the reasonable purpose of limiting the public’s exposure to the potentially life-threatening and communicable disease,” the decision said.

[M1903A1]

Any business owner with an ounce of sense will now seek to get out of New Mexico.

[minnesota_bound]

What about the governor keeping open the business’s who gave her money? The virus is in Wal-Mart, and Amazon etc.

[fuzzylogic]

Agree.

“...are a reasonable exercise of the police power to protect the public health.”

Reasonable? Says who? Reasonable to those that have nothing to lose by these actions that only accomplish making *them* feel a little safer? ...at the expensive of destroying lives? That is the only “reasoning” that is going on here. What are the metrics for reaching such a conclusion of “reasonable”? What values of those metrics need to be reached, what thresholds should be crossed before the government can decide what is “reasonable”? Oh that’s right...we have no definition of such metrics. No measures to go by and no standard of threshold to be crossed that triggers the empowerment of such government authority!

Until we have such then the Constitution is dead. They’ve found the end-around - you just declare something to be an “emergency”. In this instance, they should at least have to publish every bit of “science” they’re referring to in making their decision. They don’t even have to do that. They just say “the science says we need to isolate people from each other to reduce contractions”. Except it doesn’t say that. Or at least they don’t have actual SCIENCE to point to that says it DOES. That should be required AT MINIMUM - otherwise we default to individual freedom.

The government has finally found a way to toss aside the Constitution for anything it wants. Gun violence...now epidemic and an “emergency”!! Climate Change...it was an emergency 10 years ago!! There’s a bad flu season (or any at all)...”emergency”!!! ...nothing to stop it if the only gating factor is saying “reasonable...given ‘emergency’”.