New Study Confirms Public Health Policy and Tools Were Weakened by Judicial Decisions During COVID Pandemic

Health Affairs has "pre-posted" the most detailed and insightful study I've seen that shows how court decisions -- including those from SCOTUS and various state supreme courts -- undermined traditional public-health policies and tools. The study was headed by Michelle M. Mello, David H. Jiang, and Wendy E. Parmet and deserves close study of the dismantling of a public-health regime that has, by and large, served this country well since its founding. Here's the authors' conclusion:

Our analysis of 112 COVID-19-era judicial decisions revealed areas of profound instability in how courts analyze challenges to exercises of public health legal powers. Based on our understanding of prepandemic case law, the decisions also represent surprising departures from how courts had previously analyzed similar claims, especially those concerning religious liberty and statutory authority.

Public officials come in for some of the criticism, particularly for their occasional failure to explain the rationale for their decisions, which left those decisions vulnerable to attack through litigation. The lesson is unmistakable: the courts, the regulators, and the rest of us need to do better the next time. And there will be a next time.