Gulf Coast regional IDPA match went up but there were a fair number of absences. However I have seen notification for two majors being cancelled.
Our local USPSA club in Austin cancelled matches for the time being. If the city / county implement bans on meetings of 50 or more thats going to knock out all the local matches in the world's mecca of tactical shooting.
Those statutes include the shutdown of private businesses, private schools, private gatherings etc. the constitution is not a suicide pact.
Quarantine orders from the executive branch are subject to judicial review to ensure they are not misused but they are legitimate and will be enforced.
The government having the ability to do things in times of public health emergencies is a legal tradition in existence prior to the formation of England, much less the US. The government has the ability to do drastic things during a health crisis. Your belief it can't is utterly irrelevant.
Maybe the way YOU read them they don’t but when read with a legal eye, they do. It is not an engineering statement of work specifying every detail. It is an open ended authorization for handling both foreseeable and unforeseen future emergencies.
42 USC 264 is both clear and broad.
The open ended and ambiguous nature of the authority vested in the surgeon general under the statute is why judicial review is built in.a) Promulgation and enforcement by Surgeon General
The Surgeon General, with the approval of the Secretary, is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession
Most states have similar provisions if you look hard enough.
And because there are contrarian assholes who don’t care about other peoples welfare 42 USC 271 and 42 CFR part 71 both provide for the arrest of persons breaking quarantine. Breaking quarantine is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year confinement and a $100,000 fine. If breaking the quarantine results in a death it is a felony punishable by one year in jail and a $250,000 fine.
During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic persons who appeared in public and refused to wear masks as required were shot. Social distancing/quarantine procedures followed early enough can ensure we won’t have to go there again.
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As a practicing attorney I'll echo HCM and Zincwarrior. There's almost no area of law - in fact, none at all that I can think of offhand - that is purely governed by statute. All law is interpreted through case law and precedent just as much as the letter of the law, and that's nothing new, it indeed predates the United States and all of the founding fathers were well aware of it. Legal authority was, when the Constitution was written, and is still, derived every bit as much from jurisprudence as from codified statutes.
Edit: Edited to note that the modern trend for the last few decades has indeed been toward codified statutes and away from common law, but even those statutes are interpreted through the lens of case law and interpretation, and where common law hasn't been specifically supplanted by statute or contrary jurisprudence, it still generally holds.
Last edited by LockedBreech; 03-16-2020 at 11:35 AM.
State Government Attorney | Beretta, Glock, CZ & S&W Fan