Barr: “The Constitution is not suspended in times of crisis.”
by C.J. Ciaramella
Reason.com
As local and state governments across the country continue to enforce strict lockdown measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Attorney General William Barr issued a memo Monday ordering federal prosecutors across the country to be “be on the lookout for state and local directives that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens.”
The memo to U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country said that the Department of Justice may have an obligation to intervene in federal court “if a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID-19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections.”