As Governors and Mayors across the country are instituting “Stay at Home” orders, some are asking big questions about how parts of the government may take advantage of the coronavirus outbreak in violation of our 1st, 2nd and 4th amendment rights.
NPR reports that when local San Francisco Bay officials issued “shelter in place” for residents in seven counties, Arnab Mukherjea thought that it was “a bit draconian” for him and his family.
Despite his early objections, the California State University, East Bay professor of health sciences and resident of Contra Costa county acknowledged, “Let’s be honest, this is pain, but a little bit of pain right now may be worth it … If we do this correctly, it will indeed get us faster to those things that are highly prioritized in our day-to-day lives, particularly for those who are in vulnerable communities.”
Georgetown University Law School’s Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, points out that when individuals are quarantined, the public accepts that as needed. However, says Gostin, “Once you start getting into … an en masse … lockdown where government will actually aggressively enforce it, then you’re getting into territory that implicates the most fundamental constitutional rights…”
The question is not, “Should I take precautions but what happens to the Constitution?”
Watch the video and learn what Ben Swann says are the questions we must ask of our government during this lockdown period.
