National

Justice Alito says pandemic has resulted in ‘unimaginable’ restrictions on individual liberty

By Robert Barnes
November 12, 2020 at 10:51 p.m. EST

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told the Federalist Society on Thursday night that the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in previously “unimaginable” restrictions on individual liberty. ... “We have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020,” Alito said in a speech webcast to the legal society’s national lawyers convention, which was virtual this year because of the pandemic.

He added: “The covid crisis has served as sort of a constitutional stress test.” ... Alito said he was not criticizing officials for their policy decisions — “I’m a judge, not a policymaker” — and said before launching into the speech that he hoped his remarks would not be “twisted or misunderstood.”

Alito, one of the court’s most conservative members, said it would be hard to imagine before the pandemic that speeches and concerts would be off-limits and that churches would be empty on Easter and synagogues vacant on sacred holidays. The Supreme Court itself has been closed to the public since March, and the justices hold their meetings and hear oral arguments via teleconference.



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He worried about religious liberty becoming a second-class right — although religious conservatives won all three of their cases at the court last year — and that the Second Amendment was not respected. He repeated his criticism of the court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that granted same-sex couples the right to marry. He told those watching that he predicted at the time that those who continued to hold to the notion that marriage is only between a man and a woman would be seen as bigots. “That is just what is coming to pass,” he said.

Robert Barnes
Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987. He joined The Post to cover Maryland politics, and he has served in various editing positions, including metropolitan editor and national political editor. He has covered the Supreme Court since November 2006. Follow https://twitter.com/scotusreporter