The COVID Cases: A Preliminary Assessment of Judicial Review of Public Health Powers During a Partisan and Polarized Pandemic
51 Pages Posted: 1 Feb 2021
Date Written: January 29, 2021
Abstract
What powers do states have to protect the public from a public health emergency? For most of the last 100 years, the protracted and robust debate about that question has been largely hypothetical. Although courts had occasion to assess the scope of state public health powers in cases concerning HIV, measles, vaping, and Ebola, to offer just a few examples, until COVID-19, no court in the past century had to determine the full reach of state public health emergency powers during a widespread and highly lethal pandemic. Nor had any court been asked to reconcile contemporary understandings of constitutional rights with the states’ need to protect its residents from such a pandemic.
In the spring of 2020, numerous state and local courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, were presented with just those challenges. As cases of COVID-19 spiked in many American communities, governors and local officials across the country used their emergency powers to impose a range of social distancing orders (SDOs), shuttering businesses, restricting religious services, requiring the wearing of masks, and banning nonessential medical services, all in an effort to “flatten the curve.” Although the vast majority of the public supported these measures, at least initially, numerous litigants went to court seeking to enjoin SDOs. They did so against the backdrop of an increasingly polarized reaction to the pandemic, with President Trump, who had promoted social distancing in March, tweeting in April for the liberation of states as armed protesters shut down the Michigan legislature. Meanwhile, false and misleading information about COVID-19 and potential policy responses spread wildly across social media, some of it amplified by the President himself.
Protests, polarization, and misinformation: these formed the environment in which state and federal courts confronted the initial wave of constitutional challenges to COVID-19 SDOs. In deciding those claims, and in the absence of significant contemporary precedent, most courts looked to the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. A complex and multifaceted decision, Jacobson has been cited frequently in the 115 years since it was decided. But never before had it been used so prominently to decide the constitutionality of broad state SDOs in the midst of a pandemic. And never before had it been relied upon to such an extent in such a lethal, partisan, and heated moment.
How did the courts respond to the initial wave of litigation? This Article offers some preliminary observations by examining court opinions published in Westlaw reviewing abortion, free speech, and free exercise claims that cited to Jacobson between March 21 and May 29, 2020, when the Supreme Court handed down its first COVID-19 opinions. This examination shows that although lower courts offered different interpretations of Jacobson, all accepted the importance of the state’s interest in protecting the public’s health. Moreover, no court questioned the seriousness of the pandemic; nor did any adopt the misleading information about the pandemic that was widely available on social media.
Nevertheless, at least until May 29, when Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh issued concurring and dissenting opinions respectively accompanying the Supreme Court’s refusal to block the application of California’s social distancing order to religious services, the lower courts diverged over how to reconcile the deference that Jacobson accords to public health authorities with the protection of fundamental constitutional rights. Further, while factual distinctions regarding state-specific SDOs likely help explain some of the different outcomes, the shifting nature of the claims and the evolving politics around SDOs may also have played a role, raising critical questions as to how courts may respond should states impose new SDOs either in response to a “second wave” of COVID-19 or a future pandemic.
Keywords: COVID-19, public health, Jacobson,
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