How to Protect Civil Liberties in a Pandemic
Last month, tens of millions of Americans suddenly accepted previously unthinkable restrictions on freedoms as basic as leaving home, gathering for worship, assembling in public, running businesses, and having elective surgery.
They did so understanding the sacrifice to be urgent and temporary. The coronavirus was spreading. Dramatic action was required to avert countless deaths. Then life would return to normal. But as the weeks pass, the comforting conceit that this emergency is time-limited begins to muddy as much as it clarifies. What if there is no effective treatment until 2021? Or 2023? What if more and more members of the public dissent from social distancing with each passing week, until compliance is no longer mostly voluntary?
The prospect of civil disobedience seemed to grow last week, when President Donald Trump instructed his Twitter followers to “liberate” several states with Democratic governors and small populist protests began to make headlines in communities across the country. In one scene, protesting motorists in Denver were met by health-care workers silently blocking traffic. On Monday, a couple thousand people gathered for an anti-quarantine protest in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Similar gatherings are scheduled in other cities.
[Read: What the ‘liberate’ protests really mean for Republicans]
The cries to “open up the country” don’t reflect the feelings of most Americans. A poll released Monday found that 60 percent of Americans oppose the protests, while 22 percent support them. Nor are the protesters of a like mind with some of the country’s most prominent libertarians and civil-liberties organizations.
The UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert with a reputation for valuing civil liberties, that while liberty of movement and association are hugely important, “the premise behind the
