But they have found common interest following the sweeping steps public health officials took to stem the spread of a deadly and uncharted virus. The entities pressing the public health litigation predate the pandemic and come to the issue motivated by different dynamics. “We will rue the day where we have other public health emergencies, and we’re simply unable to act decisively and rapidly.” ‘Legal Version’ of Navy SEAL Team 6 “This will come back to haunt America,” said Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Just as concerning, said multiple public health experts interviewed, is how the upended legal landscape will impact the nation’s emergency response in future pandemics. Public health experts say it has endangered the fundamental tools that public health workers have utilized for decades to protect community health: mandatory vaccinations for public school children against devastating diseases like measles and polio, local officials’ ability to issue health orders in an emergency, basic investigative tactics used to monitor the spread of infectious diseases, and the use of quarantines to stem that spread. “You have civil servants up against a machine that has a singular focus and that is incredibly challenging to deal with,” said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials.Īll told, the COVID-era litigation has altered not just the government response to this pandemic. That put his Republican successor, Trump, in position to fill hundreds of judicial vacancies, including the three Supreme Court openings, with candidates decidedly more friendly to the small-government philosophy long espoused by conservative think tanks. Their legal efforts have gained traction with a federal judiciary transformed by Republican congressional leaders, who strategically stonewalled judicial appointments in the final years of Democratic President Barack Obama’s second term. They also share connections with the State Policy Network, an umbrella organization for state-based conservative and libertarian think tanks and legal centers, and the SPN-fostered American Juris Link, described by president and founder Carrie Ann Donnell as “SPN for lawyers.” In the COVID era, the blocs have supported one another in numerous legal challenges by filing amicus briefs, sharing resources and occasionally teaming up. Other cases have chipped away at the power of federal and state authorities to mandate COVID vaccines for certain categories of employees, or thwarted a governor’s ability to declare emergencies.Īlthough the three blocs are distinct, they share ties with the Federalist Society, a conservative legal juggernaut. There, the conservative majority, bolstered by three staunchly conservative justices appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued an emergency injunction finding the order violated the freedom to worship. In California, a lawsuit brought by religious groups challenging a health order that limited the size of both secular and nonsecular in-home gatherings as COVID-19 surged made it to the U.S. Most of the dozens of cases he filed were dismissed but nonetheless had a chilling effect on school policies. In Missouri, the Republican state attorney general waged a campaign against school mask mandates. In Wisconsin, a conservative legal center won a case before the state Supreme Court stripping local health departments of the power to close schools to stem the spread of disease.
Through lawsuits filed around the country, or by simply wielding the threat of legal action, these loosely affiliated groups have targeted individual counties and states and, in some cases, set broader legal precedent. “That’s the arena where these decisions are being made, but it’s the fundamental constitutional principles that underlie it that are an issue.” “I don’t think these cases have ever been about public health,” said Daniel Suhr, managing attorney for the Liberty Justice Center, a Chicago-based libertarian litigation group. Galvanized by what they’ve characterized as an overreach of COVID-related health orders issued amid the pandemic, lawyers from the three overlapping spheres - conservative and libertarian think tanks, Republican state attorneys general, and religious liberty groups - are aggressively taking on public health mandates and the government agencies charged with protecting community health. Through a wave of pandemic-related litigation, a trio of small but mighty conservative legal blocs has rolled back public health authority at the local, state and federal levels, recasting America’s future battles against infectious diseases.
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