Gorsuch criticizes officials for violating Americans’ civil liberties.

Justice Gorsuch Broadside Officials at All Levels for Massive ‘Intrusions’ on Americans’ Civil Liberties

The Supreme Court dismissed a civil liberties.”>pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence, but Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say. In an eight-page statement, the conservative justice criticized how governments responded to COVID-19, calling it “perhaps the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines, and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state, and federal officials, including his colleagues.

Gorsuch’s Different Course

Gorsuch, who loves to ski and bicycle, has been more willing than most justices to part company with his colleagues, both left and right. He has mainly voted with the other conservatives in his six years as a justice, but he has charted a different course on some issues, writing the court’s 2020 opinion that extended federal protections against workplace discrimination to LGBT people.

Gorsuch’s Lessons Learned

Gorsuch gathered his complaints in one place, writing about lessons he hoped might be learned from the past three years. “One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action — almost any action — as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat. A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force,” he wrote. Another possible lesson, he wrote: “The concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government.”

Final Thoughts

Gorsuch acknowledged that emergency orders sometimes are necessary, but he warned that they “threaten to generate others.” The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.

• Gorsuch criticized how governments responded to COVID-19, calling it “perhaps the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
• Gorsuch has been more willing than most justices to part company with his colleagues, both left and right.
• Gorsuch wrote about lessons he hoped might be learned from the past three years.
• Gorsuch acknowledged that emergency orders sometimes are necessary, but he warned that they “threaten to generate others.”

The Supreme Court dismissed a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence, but Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say. In an eight-page statement, the conservative justice criticized how governments responded to COVID-19, calling it “perhaps the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”