The widespread use of covid lockdowns has been dubbed “the greatest invasion of civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country” by a Supreme Court justice.
Justice Neil Gorsuch offered a damning analysis of the limitations imposed by executive officials at both the state and federal levels.
During the pandemic, emergency orders were issued “on a breathtaking scale,” according to Gorsuch, in a declaration he wrote as part of a Supreme Court lawsuit involving Title 42.
‘Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private,’ he wrote.
‘They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too.’
The justice, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump in 2017, provided examples of how authorities’surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct’.
He described how vaccination requirements, which included threats of punishment for workers and service personnel who refused, allowed “federal executive officials to enter the act too.”
‘Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed,’ Gorsuch added.
Congress and state legislatures ‘too often stayed mute’ as emergency decrees were issued ‘at a frenetic speed’.
The declaration was made at the same time that the Supreme Court rejected a challenge brought by Republican states to uphold the Title 42 public health regulation that permitted the US to turn away asylum applicants during the outbreak.
As emergency orders were being issued “at a frenetic speed,” Congress and state legislatures “too frequently stayed silent.”
The announcement came simultaneously with the Supreme Court rejecting a lawsuit by Republican states to uphold the Title 42 public health regulation that allowed the US to deny asylum during the outbreak.
‘One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.
‘A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force.’
He concluded: ‘Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others.
‘And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.’
Numerous studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of lockdown both domestically and abroad, showing that there are some instances where the drawbacks exceed the benefits.
Draconian shutdowns, according to one study by an international team of economists, only had a 3% impact on Covid mortality in the UK, US, and Europe in 2020.
That translates to 6,000 fewer deaths in Europe and 4,000 fewer deaths in the US, according to the experts from Johns Hopkins University in the US, Lund University in Sweden, and the Danish think tank the Center for Political Studies.
However, according to official US data, Covid cannot be held responsible for the over 300,000 extra fatalities that occurred in the US during the pandemic’s more than two-year duration.
A health policy specialist from Indiana University named Dr. Coady Wing told DailyMail.com that these pandemic restrictions kept those who needed care the most away from clinics, perhaps resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths.
