The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.
Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, however, leveling harsh criticism at how governments, from small towns to the nation’s capital, responded to COVID-19.
The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, called measures taken by government officials during the pandemic perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions.
His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials — even his colleagues.
“Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent illegal immigrants from staying in the United States.
President Joe Biden finally got his way when the policy ended last week.