WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.
Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, leveling harsh criticism of how governments, from small towns to the nation\u2019s capital, responded to the gravest public health threat in a century.
The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump\u2019s first Supreme Court nominee, called emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans perhaps \u201cthe greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.\u201d
He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials \u2014 even his colleagues.
\u201cExecutive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,\u201d Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.
The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
From the start of his Supreme Court tenure in 2017, Gorsuch, a Colorado native who loves to ski and bicycle, has been more willing than most justices to part company with his colleagues, both left and right.
He has mainly voted with the other conservatives in his six years as a justice, joining the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade and expanded gun rights last year.
But he has charted a different course on some issues, writing the court\u2019s 2020 opinion that extended federal protections against workplace discrimination to LGBTQ people. He also has joined with the liberal justices in support of Native American rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n