After tasting COVID-19 emergency powers, governors will take aim at more rights
Timothy P. Carney
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To justify her claim to dictatorial power, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) says that the Bill of Rights does not apply in emergency situations.
Lujan Grisham announced last week she was unilaterally, universally, and without any process suspending the right to keep and bear arms.
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“Isn’t it unconstitutional to say you cannot exercise your carry license?” one reporter asked.
Lujan Grisham responded: “With one exception: And that is, if there’s an emergency — and I’ve declared an emergency for a temporary amount of time — I can invoke additional powers. No constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute. There are restrictions on free speech. There are restrictions on my freedoms. In this emergency, this 11-year-old, and all these parents who have lost all these children, they deserve my attention to have the debate about whether or not in an emergency, we can create a safer environment.”
Where does this idea come from, that a governor can unilaterally suspend basic civil rights for an emergency in order to “create a safer environment”?
This is what most executives in the world, including most governors in the United States, did in 2020 to “flatten the curve” or “slow the spread” of COVID-19.
In the Democrat-run county where I lived in 2020, the county government banned even outdoor church services, which was clearly a suspension of the freedom of assembly and the free exercise of religion.
These days, liberals will insist there is a fundamental right to travel across state lines and that state governments have no right to ask for what purposes you’re doing it. But in the spring of 2020, plenty of governors suspended that right without much resistance.
So why should COVID-19 be the only emergency that allows governors to suspend basic civil rights?
Lujan Grisham believes gun violence rises to the level of an emergency that allows her to suspend the Second Amendment (and if you take her literally, to suspend her duty to uphold the Constitution).
If she gets away with this, what other emergencies will rise to that level?
Climate change is an obvious one. President Joe Biden is being told to declare a “climate emergency.” You can imagine plenty of basic rights that a governor might suspend (including that supposed right to travel) in the wake of a climate emergency.
Then there’s the whole Democratic self-image, as the Left believes it is saving democracy itself. Or the notion that disinformation (which means opinions or facts Democrats do not like) is “harmful” to vulnerable populations. Obviously, free speech could be suspended for that reason, according to Lujan Grisham’s logic.
COVID-19 was terrible for a thousand reasons, one of which was that it gave mayors and governors a taste of dictatorial power. Now we’re seeing how far they will take it.