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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNeil Gorsuch's List of "Civil Liberties Intrusions" Is, Uh, Missing a Few Things
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/neil-gorsuch-civil-liberties-covid-at-scotus.htmlOn Thursday, Justice Neil Gorsuch released his latest (and possibly final) cri de coeur against the pandemic-era restrictions that the government imposed to slow the spread of COVID-19. Gorsuch has long railed against such policies, and his opinions have taken on an increasingly shrill tone, like the Fox Newspoisoned uncle who hectors you about the plandemic in 3,000-word Facebook comments. The justices rant in Arizona v. Mayorkas, however, hits a new low, moving beyond the usual yada-yada grievance parade to issue a thesis statement of sorts: Since March 2020, Gorsuch declared, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.
As Voxs Ian Millhiser quickly pointed out, this sweeping claim leaves out two intrusions on civil liberties that any person with a basic grasp of history and sanity would surely rank as worse than pandemic policies: slavery and Jim Crow. During slavery, which was not only condoned but also practiced by Supreme Court justices, people of color were held in bondage; beaten, kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered; denied all civil rights, including freedom of speech and religion; denied the right to vote, participate in democracy, even claim American citizenship; robbed of their children; and barred from marriagein short, denied life, liberty, and property without due process of law from birth until death. During Jim Crow, Black Americans were still subject to brutal, often lethal violence, both state-sponsored and vigilante; still denied the right to vote; still robbed of fundamental freedoms like speech and religion; still subjected to ruthless, degrading segregation in all public spaces; and still subject to severe economic exploitation, the effects of which endure today. These could certainly be described as intrusions on civil liberties.
I see four ways one might try to square Gorsuchs declaration on Thursday with this horrific history. First, the justice may have meant what he said, and truly believes that COVID policies were a greater burden on civil liberties than slavery or Jim Crow. He does, after all, really hate wearing masks. Second, Gorsuch may have simply forgotten about the centuries-long subjugation of Black Americans (which originalists prefer to ignore, anyway). Third, he may have not considered these constitutionally sanctified, Supreme Courtsanctioned crimes against humanity as civil liberties abuses in the tradition sense; per this view, they were just the constitutional system at work as the founding generation might have envisioned. Fourth, he may have been attempting to cordon off the experiences of Black people and other historically abused minority groups as not having been a collective civil liberties intrusion experienced by all Americans (read: white Americans); note his choice of words in writing that we suffered civil liberties violations. A charitable reading might suggest that Gorsuch is speaking for well-off, middle-aged white men, whose privilege insulated them from adversity until that dark day in March 2020 when their local Buffalo Wild Wings shut its doors indefinitely.
If this last possibility sounds harsh, consider the broader myopia of the justices Thursday opinion, styled as a statement. He attached it to a case, Arizona v. Mayorkas, that dealt with red states attempt to maintain Title 42, a set of border restrictions once justified by COVID; since the pandemic is officially over, the court booted the case. Gorsuch used the decision as an excuse to list the manifold injustices that, to his mind, the government smuggled through in the name slowing the spread. Yet theres not a word about the ways in which both the Trump and Biden administrations exploited Title 42 to prevent migrants fleeing persecution from seeking asylum in the U.S. (Gorsuch has frequently voted against asylum-seekers.) Nor is there any thought given to incarcerated people who were subjected to appalling, unhygienic conditions throughout the pandemic, a large number of whom were killed by the virus. (Gorsuch voted to block a lower court decision mandating safety measures for inmates.)
*snip*
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