As is pretty well known, many governors and mayors who have been pretty tough in cracking down on violations of their social distancing orders have ignored widespread flouting of these same orders in the case of recent BLM protests. In many cases, these governors and mayors have themselves flouted their own rules in participating in these protests.
My question is, leaving aside the moral aspects of this, what are the legal ramifications of their doing this? Does this give additional basis for people challenging in court the enforcement (or even the existence) of these orders as applied to others? Or is it meaningless from a legal standpoint (and the only thing anyone can do in the face of such apparent inconsistency is vote the offending politicians out)?
Yeah, you’re going to need to provide cites. For example, pretty much all the rules passed in Illinois are about businesses. There’s pretty much nothing about what you can do as in individual outside.
I don’t know about all states, but at least in NY & NJ (and I’m pretty sure in many other stares as well) large public gatherings have been banned even when not connected to businesses.
[Here’s some commentary about the issue, but I’m wondering about the strictly legal ramifications.]
In any event, regardless of this puzzling moderating decision, I hope at least some people will still address the factual legal question posed in the OP.
I’ll take a run at it. But I’m truly not aware of anyone being prosecuted for flouting the bans against public gatherings. Can you direct me to a sample case?
If you look at the cites in post #3 to this thread you’ll see some reporting on it.
But this is has been very widely reported, and it’s trivial to find additional reporting and commentary on this. (The point of this thread is that while there has been extensive commentary, I’ve not seen any on the specific aspect of whether this has legal ramifications in terms of enforcement.)
Sort of related (sort of?), is the well-reported situation that persons wishing to register to attend Trump’s rally in Tulsa are required to sign a waiver absolving the campaign, the venue, and others from any liability for any covidness they may encounter. The question has been kicked around here and there, how legally valid or binding is any such waiver like that?
Or selective enforcement based upon a constitutional right. They favor the speech of the BLM protestors but not yours. They favor that assembly, but not yours.
It’s not about others breaking the law but about government policy towards others who break the law.
It’s as if the government explicitly decided to stop enforcing speeding laws in certain politically-connected parts of the state while continuing to enforce them vigorously in parts dominated by the political opposition. Absent a racial angle, does the selectiveness of the enforcement policy have no legal import?
This happened on March 25, at the height of the lockdowns and two months before the first of the large mass protests. Do you have a cite that happened within the last 3 weeks?