Placer County official must fight COVID-19 instead of suing Gavin Newsom over shutdown

A ridiculous waste of time and resources. That’s what Placer County residents will see if one county official follows through on his threat to sue Gov. Gavin Newsom over California’s coronavirus shutdown.

“If we don’t see any action, we may be calling a special meeting to seek a legal injunction,” Placer County Board Chairman Kirk Uhler told The Sacramento Bee on Thursday.

Uhler is understandably frustrated because Placer does not yet meet the standards required to reopen most businesses in the county. The state’s requirements include hiring a certain number of “contact tracers” and ramping up testing capacity to a daily minimum of 600.

But Uhler’s argument lacks legal merit. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the constitutional authority of state governors to protect public health. Some people may disagree with Newsom’s decision, but he’s on solid legal ground.

“The law is clear: the government has broad power in a public health emergency to take the steps needed to stop the spread of a communicable disease,” wrote Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, in The Sacramento Bee. Chemerinsky pointed out the fact that use of mandatory quarantines to stop the spread of disease dates back to the nation’s earliest days, when “Philadelphia was isolated to control the spread of yellow fever.”

“In 1926, the Supreme Court wrote: ‘It is well settled that a state, in the exercise of its police power, may establish quarantines against human beings, or animals, or plants,’” he added.

Uhler’s lack of legal reasoning exposes the lawsuit threat as nothing more than political grandstanding. Polls show that most Californians support Newsom’s statewide stay-at-home order to reduce the death toll of COVID-19, but a small protest movement has started to make a lot of noise. These protesters – who seem to believe that a higher COVID-19 death toll will somehow boost the economy – are backed by President Donald Trump.

On Friday, Trump said California “needs to move a little quicker to open the economy.” But California doesn’t need any advice from a man who recently suggested an “injection” of disinfectant might provide a quick cure for the virus. Doctors made it clear that taking Trump’s “medical” advice could prove fatal, and the same is true of his push to abandon COVID-19 safety measures prematurely.

COVID-19 is killing over 3,000 Americans every day and the death toll is now expected to exceed 100,000. Over 2,500 Californians have died. No one wants to find a shortcut out of this mess more than Gov. Newsom. With millions of Californians filing for unemployment and the state’s budget deficit projected at $54.3 billion, Newsom is undoubtedly praying for a miracle. No one wants to see the Golden State’s economic machine up and running more than California’s governor, who is likely watching his political future evaporate in real-time.

But he has wisely decided to follow the doctors, the data and the science. He knows that abandoning safety measures too soon will result in even more death and economic devastation. A recent poll showed that nearly 83 percent of Californians approve of his handling of the crisis. So, the math is simple: His decisions have saved lives, and he has no political reason to please the slim minority that prefers a higher death toll.

Newsom’s decision to declare the first statewide stay-at-home order in the national flattened the infection curve and allowed California to avoid the worst-case scenario. That could change if we allow a handful of misinformed malcontents to dictate public health policy.

Instead of wasting precious energy and resources on pointless lawsuits, Placer County officials should focus their efforts on working with the state to ramp up testing and contact tracing.

All Californians are making painful sacrifices to protect the lives of our fellow citizens during this pandemic. And, yes, most of us are tired of the shutdown. But if we allow ignorance and impatience to trump science, all of our good work will be undone.