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Where Are the Lawyers?!
As we’ve watched government edicts around the country force millions of small business owners into bankruptcy, I keep wondering the same thing: Where are the lawyers?
We have by no means defeated the COVID pandemic, nor is it an unserious situation (hospitals in El Paso and across Utah are at capacity), but this isn’t March, either. We know how the virus is spread and we know safe ways for almost all businesses (outside of perhaps bars) to operate. Nevertheless, we’re seeing millions of storefronts remain closed for business, or under such draconian limits that turning anything resembling a profit is impossible.
Is the goal to keep these small businesses shut for good?
Supposedly it’s all based on science. Why can’t these stores in my district on the verge of bankruptcy not open safely, perhaps with a capacity limit?! Does government not care that they will never be able to reopen? pic.twitter.com/FujZYau2dt
— Simcha Eichenstein (@SEichenstein) October 26, 2020
Look at the stores being kept closed in New York City: a shoe store, a jewelry shop, a nail salon. With proper masking and distancing, we know that all of these can safely operate. There is no public health justification for keeping them closed indefinitely. The PPP is over, there is no more help forthcoming for small businesses. They are expected to pay rent and expenses with no income; they are not allowed to try to make an income.
This is theft, plain and simple. To my untrained lawyer mind, it reminds me of eminent domain. The government has taken income from businesses without any compensation. They should face the consequences of these closures.
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Lawyers only look out for themselves. They are more interested in “virtue signaling” like the rest of the media-run culture than to take a case on the “wrong” side to put truth and freedom over being in their secular PC bubble with the democrats. They don’t want to risk getting voted out of the club and being perceived as supportive of Trump and America loving.
Most people have traded liberty for safety. They’ll get neither.
Lawyers thrive on misery. There is more misery to be had if the lockdowns continue. Several lawyers on the Nextdoor server I am on have boasted they will not take people seeking to end shutdown and mask mandates because Science! Actually it is because there is more money to be made in bankruptcy and family law the longer the lockdowns go on.
I watch Robert Barnes a civil libertarian and youtuber. He says that they need to wait for the right case, because the judges in a crisis always support the government. Its only when the crisis recedes will judges finally stop blanket supporting the government.
So where are the lawyers? They are coming.
Well, I’ve been here, complaining about the lockdowns from the start, though I admit that I stopped many months ago because I thought that I was starting to sound like a broken record.
This is not a problem that can be effectively solved by lawyers. The general tool that a lawyer uses is a lawsuit, which is an effort to get a judge to make a decision that will change policy.
Health and safety regulations are not well suited to judicial oversight. These are generally left to the political process — meaning the legislative and executive branches. Sometimes, at the local level, these turn out to be one and the same thing — i.e. a county board of supervisors is often both the legislative branch that enacts ordinances, and the executive branch that oversees enforcement.
The alternative is judicial tyranny. When a judge substitutes his policy preference for the decisions of the elected legislative and executive officials, we cease to live in a representative republic. (There can be exceptions to this when judges are elected, but this is a separate can of worms.)
There may be limited opportunities to prevent executive overreach, as occurred in Michigan (I think), when (I think) the state supreme court ruled that the governor had exceeded her emergency authority. But there is a certain degree of emergency authority, and it needs to be there to deal with genuine crises.
A more technical way of expressing this is that ordinary regulations, like health and safety regulations, are subject to what courts call “rational basis” review. This is an important doctrine under which the judiciary defers to the legislature and/or the executive, if there is a “rational basis” for the action of the other branch, even if the judge personally disagrees. The alternative, again, is pure rule by the judiciary.
So I don’t think that the problem here is lawyers, or judges. The problem is the public, which appears to be generally going along with the restrictions, in the sense that the political branches do not perceive that they are alienating more voters than they are attracting with their Covid restrictions.
Notice that the extent of the restrictions varies quite widely by state, as a result of politicians tailoring their policies to the desires of their electorate. Thus, places like Florida and my home state of Arizona have fewer restrictions, while places like California and New York have more restrictions.
I am annoyed that the schools have not opened in Arizona, but my general impression is that it’s better here than in most places.
Fun fact about hospitals… all of these reports about hospitals running “at capacity” are pretty misleading. They run “at capacity” pretty much every year from the start of cold and flu season until spring. As I’ve said dozens of times since march, if we reported on everything the way we report about covid, what we’d discover is that all of it is far more similar than we’ve been led to believe over the past 9 months or so.
Safe ways for businesses to open up? Yes, we’ve known that for decades. Open em up the way they they’ve always been open.