WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY from Jeff Childers
Yesterday, the Supreme Court sent a procedurally-complicated Title 42 lawsuit back to DC Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as “moot,” mostly because the official covid state of emergency is now over. It was a simple one-line order, and in spite of the related and legitimately-worrisome border issues, was legally uncontroversial.

That’s not the story.

The story is, Justice Neil Gorsuch decided to add some thoughts of his own to the one-sentence order, in an eight-page “statement” starting immediately below the order itself.

Gorsuch’s statement was rhetorical ammonium nitrate.
I suggest you read the whole thing, it will make your weekend. Although it’s eight pages long, it’s only eight Supreme Court pages, each of which is really only about a third of a regular page. But I will still excerpt the best bits for those of you who are allergic to reading legal documents.

Justice Gorsuch’s statement was a passionate and eloquent critique of government overreach during the pandemic. In the first four pages, Gorsuch described the Title 42 issues, which were just a warmup exercise for his real theme, which began by accurately describing the tyrannical excesses of out-of-control local and state executives during the pandemic:
"Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent."
Rounding out his critique of the executive branches — local and state, so far — the Justice also described the federal government’s tyrannical contributions, including the mandatory vaccines and even covid censorship:
"While executive officials issued new emergency decrees at a furious pace, state legislatures and Congress—the bodies normally responsible for adopting our laws—too often fell silent. Courts bound to protect our liberties addressed a few—but hardly all—of the intrusions upon them."
Gorsuch wrapped it up suggesting that state and federal emergency authority should be reined in:
"It is hard not to wonder, too, whether state legislatures might profitably reexamine the proper scope of emergency executive powers at the state level… Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others. And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow."
Gorsuch’s thoughts are now part of the Supreme Court’s official permanent record, and will help explain the pandemic as long as America continues to be a nation, in other words, at least until next weekend. Just kidding. Mostly. As I explained to a reporter last night, Gorsuch’s statement opens a window into the thinking of the majority-conservative side of the Supreme Court.

It seems the experience of the pandemic may have taught the Court it needs to help trim executive authority, and several pending cases will provide it with some appropriate opportunities.

Gorsuch seems to have perfectly diagnosed the problem, which is that our government has gotten out of whack, distorted, bent the frame. The Constitution set up a three-branch government, requiring the three branches to have EQUAL powers and authorities.
But if you did a “man on the street” survey, I bet most folks would pick the Presidency — the executive branch — as the most powerful branch of government. And most of that problem sprouts from federal agency powers, like those wielded by the CDC, NHS, DOJ, IRS, CIA, and the FBI, which are all controlled by the President, and which have all become regulatorily morbidly obese.

There’s just too much power in the executive branch.

That’s not Constitutional. If outsized executive authority was already a problem before the pandemic, then the pandemic turned the problem hypersonic. Gorsuch’s statement laid bare the problem.

They can write off Gorsuch as a conservative. They can try to justify his long laundry list of authoritarian executive-branch excess as “necessary in the emergency.” And even as we keep picking up the pieces of all the lives broken by government’s so-called “mitigation measures,” they can continue pretending like the virus was worse, just like the officials in the old nursery tale who tried to pretend the King was fully clothed until everyone else knew he was naked but them.
But they can’t ignore Gorsuch. They can’t ignore him because he is one of the Nine, and also because his words are so genuine, undeniable, and ultimately persuasive.

Here's the full link. [supremecourt.gov]