The unchecked tactics of public-health officials have become an increasing threat to Americans’ individual freedom. Seemingly high on their power to disrupt the nation’s civic life, these officials have ignored restraints meant to prevent government from abusing our constitutional freedoms. Writing in an immigration case last May, Justice Neil Gorsuch observed, “Since March 2020, we have experienced the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” In two cases, the Supreme Court rejected the CDC’s attempt to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium, supposedly necessary to fight the pandemic, and a federal attempt to mandate Covid vaccinations for employees of large businesses.

Reflecting on how the government used the Covid crisis to expand its powers, Gorsuch noted that officials “issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale” and imposed “lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes.” Gorsuch observed that the government had closed churches and surveilled their parking lots, gathering license plate numbers and threatening congregants with criminal penalties, all while allowing politically favored businesses like casinos to remain open. In moments of extreme threats like the pandemic, Gorsuch wrote, many citizens need “only a nudge” before they will accede to the loss of cherished civil liberties, including the right “to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes.”

One hopes that Judge Doughty’s injunction will soon be restored and that the plaintiffs will prevail, thus denying our public-health elite the ability to lean on social media platforms in their effort to suppress the truth about Covid—or the next crisis that comes along.