Liberty vs. COVID-19. Who Wins?
THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, LIKE ANY extreme crisis, is forcing tough choices between the competing values of safety and liberty. Already, the pandemic has presented challenges in four main areas, says David Cole, National Legal Director of the ACLU: voting rights, prisoner rights, disability rights and—somewhat unexpectedly—abortion rights.
The voting rights issue couldn’t be more basic, says Cole: “How do you keep democracy going?” More specifically, how do you adapt the entire American voting infrastructure to pandemic conditions—and do it almost overnight?
It’s not just about the primaries, though 16 states have already had to postpone theirs, mostly until June. It’s about the general election on November 3, too, since even if the pandemic recedes in the months ahead, voters’ fears may persist—and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has warned of a possible “COVID-19 second-wave” in the fall.
Then there is an entirely separate category—essentially, the right to life for medically vulnerable inmates in prisons, jails and immigration detention facilities. These issues might be the most urgent, since inmates’ lives are at stake. Their institutions are “tinderboxes” of contagion, medical experts have warned, and prisoners are unable to follow any of the most basic social-distancing or hand-washing practices that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended to ward off infection.
As of April 15, 334 inmates at New York City’s jails had COVID-19, according to the city’s Department of Correction. (The staff was doing even worse, with 657 confirmed cases among guards and non-uniformed personnel.) The infection rate among inmates was more than 40 times the national average for the general American population, and more than six times the average for New York City—currently the nation’s worst-afflicted hot spot. At least one corrections officer has died.
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