Who Gets To Choose?

Yesterday Just the News posted an article about a law proposed in the New York State Assembly. The proposed law strengthens my conviction that very few of our lawmakers around the country have actually read the U.S. Constitution.

The article reports:

A law proposed in the New York State Assembly would permit state officials to remove and detain state residents if they were deemed to be a “danger to public health.”

Assembly Bill 416 dictates that, “upon determining by clear and convincing evidence that the health of others is or may be endangered by a case, contact or carrier, or suspected case, contact or carrier of a contagious disease,” state officials may “order the removal and/or detention of such a person or of a group of such persons.”

“Such person or group of persons shall be detained in a medical facility or other appropriate facility or premises,” the bill continues.

Individuals seized under the law’s provisions would be “detained for such period and in such manner as the department may direct,” namely so long as the state government determines that the individual is contagious.

Such individuals would be “detained in a manner that is consistent with recognized isolation and infection control principles in order to minimize the likelihood of transmission of infection to such person and to others.”

The law is currently in committee and has not yet made it to the assembly floor calendar. Can you image the civil rights abuses that could potentially take place if this law is passed? Who decides that someone is endangering the health of others? Is this going to work like the Covid rules for protests worked–open-my-business protesters were harassed and sometimes arrested while being accused of spreading Covid and violent protesters that tore down statues and destroyed property were not a problem with spreading Covid?

If laws like this law are passed, our children and grandchildren will grow up in a very different country than the one we grew up in.