Unlimited Power: The Latest Supreme Court Dissent Is A Window Into The Mind Of The COVID Bureaucracy By Christopher Bedford for The Federalist
The left thinks its power is so broad as to be essentially limitless, and so singularly vested as to be checked virtually solely at its own discretion.
Interested to know what the top liberal legal minds of the United States Supreme Court think about government power and your private property? First, take 10 minutes to read Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion, written for the majority, in the court’s Thursday night decision to stop the ban on rental income; then spend another 10 minutes on Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent.
Here’s a hint: The left thinks its power is so overarching as to impact nearly every citizen, so broadly interpreted as to be essentially limitless, and so singularly vested as to be checked virtually solely at the discretion of the bureaucracy itself.
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“Substantially … Tailored”
The absurdity begins in the opening paragraph of Breyer’s dissent, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonya Sotomayor. There, he lauds what he describes as the government’s limited and judicious use of its power, writing, “the [Centers for Disease Control]’s current order is substantially more tailored than its prior eviction moratorium, which automatically applied nationwide.”
Therefore, he reasons, there’s no reason to even consider if the CDC has any authority on the matter.
How tailored is it, though? He gets to that two paragraphs later, when he cites the number of American counties the order applies to: Ninety percent; the vast majority of the country. This, he openly admits, is the left’s idea of “substantially more tailored;” it’s right there in the open.
Limitless Authority
So where does this “tailored” power come from, exactly? According to the CDC, it comes from the Public Health Service Act, a law Congress passed in 1944 to handle outbreaks of serious disease. It reads:
The Surgeon General may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary.
