On Monday a federal district judge appointed by Donald Trump overturned a CDC mandate that required masks on airplane flights. Liberals naturally went nuts.
But it's worth a brief explainer about this. This particular ruling was just a ruling, but it falls into the general category of what are called "nationwide" injunctions—which have exploded in recent years. However, being nationwide isn't really what's new about them. After all, if a district court ruled that my Booble search engine violated Google's trademark, it wouldn't apply only to Irvine. It would apply anywhere I tried to use it across the country.
However, the ruling would apply only to me. If someone else started up a Tootle search engine, Google would have to sue them all over.
In other words, the main thing that's new about these injunctions is that they apply to everyone, not just to whoever filed the suit. This is a departure from the normal behavior of district court judges, who generally require you to prove standing and then issue rulings that apply only to the particular person or group that demonstrated harm.
That said, everyone calls them nationwide injunctions and it's hopeless to try to change that. So let's move on to the other thing that's new about them: they're new.
With only a few exceptions, the recent wave of nationwide injunctions from district courts started in 2015, when a bunch of Republican attorneys general filed suits against DACA. Since then they've become wildly popular.
That is, they're popular with whatever party is out of power, since they're mostly used against presidential executive orders—which have also become much more widely used in the face of a generally deadlocked Congress. At a 100,000 foot level, however, nationwide injunctions are generally viewed skeptically by both parties for a bunch of obvious reasons: they encourage forum shopping; they run the risk of conflicting injunctions; and they can be issued very quickly, which forces the Supreme Court to rule on them without the kind of long judicial record they typically rely on.
The other problem with nationwide injunctions is that their constitutionality is dubious. Basically, nothing in the Constitution explicitly forbids them, but then again, the general framework of the Constitution seems to anticipate a much narrower ambit for district courts. If you look into this, though, be prepared for extensive discussions of English courts around the time the Constitution was adopted.
What to do? One of the reasons nationwide injunctions have taken off is that both parties, but especially Republicans, have appointed highly partisan district judges who are pretty much willing to approve injunctions against anything their own party dislikes. That's not going to change. But what could change is Congress. Nobody really disputes that Congress can rein in the use of nationwide injunctions, and both parties have a certain amount of opposition to nationwide injunctions. This means there's a chance of putting together a bipartisan coalition to address them, but it's difficult because at any given point in time there's one party that's more opposed to them than the other.
In any case, that's the lay of the land. Nationwide injunctions really are a new phenomenon, partly because of the newly widespread of use of executive orders and partly because the politicization of the court system has spread all the way down to district courts. There's a chance Congress could do something about them, and there's also a chance that the Supreme Court could rein them in. However, it's not clear that bipartisan annoyance is near the point of actually taking action yet.
Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle did a good job of ensuring discussion about how a Trump appointee rated as "unqualified" by the bar ssociation has the power to set national policy.
It also helps if the plaintiff finds a partisan (aka Trump appointed judge) who is also incompetent (ABA rated unqualified, but unanimously approved by the GOP senate anyway). Does not look like the administration is will fight hard to reverse this given the politics, even among many Democrats. No solace to the immune compromised, multiply comorbidly afflicted folks who still need to fly (vs a 6,000 mile round trip car ride), or people like my 1 year old granddaughter who is too young to wear a mask or get vaccinated.
I am shopping for N95 and KN95 masks with valves to make a plane ride or grocery trip more comfortable. I really don't give a shit anymore about potentially spreading covid to unmasked people via the unfiltered exhaust from such an equipped ventilator.
Well, immune comprised amount to .5% of travelers.
It seems worth noting that nationwide injunctions are driven by agency actions--pretty much anything an agency does that affects what happens can be argued to need more and different justification, and nationwide injunctions are a typical tool here. Most of the Trump adminstration's key initiatives, especially relating to immigration, were derailed by injunctions based on "there are options you could have considered and didn't".
Lol, Trump got had no initiatives on immigration that mattered. That was the point, much like jew boys other irrelevant nonsense.
One can imagine, perhaps in a pre Watergate era, national legislation around an issue like a mask mandate during a pandemic. In the current political environment, gridlock precludes legislation. Accordingly, agencies and courts ascend into the void.
What pandemic?????
Lets note how similar Trump and Biden are with silly irrelevant rules. It's a large reason why his popularity has sagged in Democratic strongholds, especially out west. Only northeast liberals care Drum. Masking rules are meant for waves, it should have been gone months ago. Much like Biden's stupid OSHA mandate, whoring to the northeastern establishment is more important than looking like a real President.
I've seen snippets of the decision. Her logic is tragically horrible. You should do a post on the laughable construction.
What happens when indoor mask mandates are dropped: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2021-2022/week13.htm
Nothing
When an action is brought against the president or a federal agency challenging the legality of a rule or executive order, it seems obvious to me that if the president or federal agency loses, they lose. The court determines that the rule or order is illegal and cannot be enforced. It wouldn't make a lot of sense if a district court determined that a CDC mandate is illegal only in the district the action is brought in. It would just be silly to require the same action to be brought separately in each district. The same applies to constitutional challenges. If a federal statute violates the Constitution, it violates the Constitution everywhere in the United States, not just in one federal district.
Liberals did not "go nuts." I suppose some of them that ride airplanes lost their shit, for a minute, but how many of us is that, really? Very, very few. As the biggest pinko commie liberal evah, I'd like to represent for the rest of us liberals that we don't care. You don't like not being forced to wear a mask on a plane? Drive. Walk. Take a hike. Whatever.
No one I know went nuts. I have heard no complaints about this at all. I live in Boston - ground zero for both COVID and liberals. Interestingly, most riders on the T were wearing masks today even though the mask mandate was lifted yesterday.
I didn't go nuts but without going through the entire 58 pages the "harm" asserted by the plaintiffs, that wearing mask could trigger "anxiety" (Daza) or "panic attacks" (Pope) is flimsy enough that any judge should have been skeptical. What is more the relief asked for far exceeds the minimal accommodation which would have been to force the CDC and airlines to drop the mask requirement for passengers that have a legitimate medical condition, like anxiety or panic, certified by a professional. In fact, there is already an exception for medical reasons. In addition, what about the anxiety and panic attacks of *all the other passengers* who now must contend with the fact that their fellow passengers are perfectly happy to infect them with a potentially serious disease? Mizelle essentially told them to pound sand.
Ok I read enough of it to see what utter BS the rejection of limited relief is. I have a coivd vaccination certificate issued by the state on my phone. In San Francsico, not being run by idiots like DeSantis, you had to show it to enter am indoor restaurant. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the hardest, and 100 being most difficult, this is a 1. It just isn't a bid deal, and certainly the CDC could have come up with a way for Daza and Pope to identify themselves as sociopathic cretins without invalidating the entire mandate. Thank goodness the Republicans are so against activist judges making the law.