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Comment by mrfusion | Hacker News Reader

The liberties protected by the Constitution are not fair-weather freedoms -- in place when times are good but able to be cast aside in times of trouble. There is no question that this country has faced, and will face, emergencies of every sort, but the solution to a national crisis can never be permitted to supersede the commitment to individual liberty that stands as the foundation of the American experiment. The constitution cannot accept the concept of a 'new normal' where the basic liberties of the people can be subordinated to open-ended emergency mitigation measures

- U.S. District Judge William Stickman declaring PA's lockdown orders unconstitutional

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Except he is wrong. The Supreme Court has ruled that such lockdowns are indeed constitutional and the States have the right to enforce them unless Congress intervenes.

When did the Supreme Court rule that?

And why the hell would Congress be able to overrule states on something like this? What torturous reading of the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to forbid lockdowns?

https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2020/09/pa-coronavirus-orde...

"U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, in a similar case out of California related to pandemic restrictions on religious gatherings, wrote in May that elected officials should be allowed latitude when acting in areas “fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties” and should not be subject to second-guessing by an “unelected federal judiciary.”

And wasn't that addressed in Stickman's ruling? There's a difference between "something that we can allow in an emergency" and "something that has been going on for 6 months and legally continues forever", like the situation in PA.

Further, if there are medical and scientific uncertainties... Erring on the side of constitutional rights seems a LOT less potentially exploitable to me. If you think that something is so critical that you need to permanently remove rights to combat it... You should be able to back that up with incontrovertible evidence.

Could you please provide more information on this?

If this is true it may change my congress and senate votes from blue to red.

I won't vote in a presidential candidate that supports lockdowns "if the science supports it" and will make me wear a mask.

Can his party truly make my state do these things?

If so that's terrifying to me and there's no way I'm giving blue, the people I voted for all my life until this year, this type of power.

Can you explain why not wearing a mask is so important to you? I simply don’t understand this reaction. We already don’t let you go naked in the streets for a variety of reasons including public health, and masks are one of the major tools we have to combat this virus. We already require standards for restaurants otherwise they get shut down due to public health concerns (there’s no freedom allowed to serve rotting meat and make others sick). Countries with high mask compliance like S Korea and Hong Kong have had far fewer cases, and when they, they limit the spread better. We’ve already lost 200k Americans in roughly 6 months, with millions more to lose if we remove all restrictions and no one wears a mask. Why does public health get such a low priority for you? And why does your freedom allow you to spread a deadly virus to me, where I have no say in it?

Do you wear seatbelts?

Indefinitely such that it’s a new normal? No. Such is not constitutional.

Edit to respond to downvotes: Nor was it constitutional to institute sweeping metadata collection as a new normal in response to an emergency situation. Nor is it constitutional to make encryption illegal as the new normal because of an emergency. Etc.

This will easily lose on appeal.

Not exactly shocking that a judge appointed by Trump would make such a statement and ruling.

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