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What’s the Supreme Court’s Title 42 Case About? Hint: It’s Not the Pandemic

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

Amid the constant partisan fussing, feuding and fighting in Washington these days, I was gratified — however briefly — by a moment of bipartisan agreement at the Supreme Court.

The moment came in a dissent from the high court’s Tuesday ruling to keep the controversial Title 42 policy in effect pending the court’s full review of the case, which has been brought by Republican officials in 19 states.

You hear a lot about Title 42 in the fractious border debate. The policy was enacted as a public health move by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow for the speedy expulsion of migrants who might bring more COVID-19 into the country. It was due to expire until Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday granted a stay to that expiration.

In an expression of what I would call a keen grasp of the obvious, Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative and Donald Trump appointee, complained in a dissenting opinion that the high court was being used for political purposes.

Gorsuch described the court’s decision as “unwise,” noting that the emergency on which Title 42 rested “has long since lapsed.”

“The current border crisis is not a COVID crisis,” he said. “And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.”

 

He was joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal appointed by President Joe Biden. Liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the states’ application.

Good for them, I say. On an issue this historically fraught and divisive, who can blame the high court for approaching it like a pond full of alligators?

Let the high court rule on constitutional questions and, wherever possible, leave the policymaking to elected officials, who are directly accountable to the voters.

Gorsuch also hints strongly at another truth: The debate over Title 42, a public health policy, isn’t really about public health. It’s about politics.

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(c) 2023 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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