Is California’s stay-at-home order violating your civil rights? Tom McClintock wants to help
Arrested for peacefully protesting at the state Capitol? Or for leaving your house in defiance of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order?
Rep. Tom McClintock sees authorities potentially violating your constitutional rights, and wants to help.
He is offering to assist anyone who needs help in challenging actions of state and local officials, alleging they may have violated constituents’ constitutional rights or civil liberties.
“Our office does not provide legal assistance,” the Republican congressman told McClatchy, “but I intend to assist any constituents in filing complaints and once filed, will follow up with the Department of Justice to assure they are being investigated.”
The offer comes a few days after Attorney General William Barr issued a memo advising federal prosecutors to be “on the lookout for state and local directives that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens.” Barr has said in a radio interview that stay-at-home orders are “disturbingly close to house arrest.”
In an update to constituents, McClintock urged everyone to read Barr’s memo and said they can file a complaint with Justice’s civil rights division “if you believe recent actions by state and local entities are violating the Constitution.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home order March 19, then loosened its restrictions a bit this week.
The California Highway Patrol has banned protests on the state Capitol grounds after 32 people were arrested last week at a rally on the Capitol steps. Thursday, at another rally that attracted hundreds of protesters, demonstrators were unable to get onto the grounds, as about 200 CHP officers patrolled the area.
Barr does not specify what such violations could entail. He advises that “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, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court.”
He offered somewhat more detail April 21 on conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.
Some policies, Barr said, “are unprecedented burdens on civil liberties right now. You know, the idea that you have to stay in your house is disturbingly close to house arrest.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t justified. I’m not saying in some places it might still be justified. But it’s very onerous, as is shutting down your livelihood,” Barr said.
McClintock also did not specify what could constitute a violation. He said he wants everyone to be aware of their right to “peaceably assemble, to petition the government for a redress of grievances, to freely exercise their religion, and not to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, and to be aware of how they can legally assert and defend these rights.”
He detailed his view in an op-ed column last week.
People in this country are being subjected to a policy “radically different and profoundly un-American: the indefinite and indiscriminate home detention without due process of perfectly healthy people on the pretext that they might catch a contagious disease,” McClintock wrote.
Certainly some people could harbor the coronavirus unknowingly, he said, but “that’s no different than a wide variety of other contagious diseases that have been with us for generations and that are far more lethal than Covid-19.”
The government’s new policies, “asserted in increasingly arbitrary and aggressive manners by public servants-turned-masters, is antithetical to our First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and our Fifth Amendment right to not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,” the congressman said.
And in California, McClintock said, “this abusive power has been used to deny citizens the right to protest the abuse itself”
Barr had virtually identical views.
“Many policies that would be unthinkable in regular times have become commonplace in recent weeks, and we do not want to unduly interfere with the important efforts of state and local officials to protect the public. But the Constitution is not suspended in times of crisis,” the nation’s top law enforcement officer said. “We must therefore be vigilant to ensure its protections are preserved, at the same time that the public is protected.”
McClintock is seeking a seventh term in November, running against Democrat Brynne Kennedy in a congressional district that stretches from Nevada County to Fresno County.
Asked to comment on McClintock’s offer of assistance, Kennedy Friday blasted the congressman as being insensitive to the needs of his constituents.
“His record reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the deep pain being felt by small businesses and so many families in our communities. This is just another example of what happens when career politicians put partisanship before the common good.,” she said.
Kennedy charged McClintock “voted against COVID-19 relief and publicly accused his own constituents of trying to ‘game the system.’’’
McClintock opposed legislation in mid-March that included paid emergency leave for people affected by the coronavirus outbreak. It also has help for states to pay unemployment benefits and Medicaid, and funds food aid for seniors and lower income people.
He explained the bill “threatens to postpone the economic recovery by guaranteeing employees up to three months of paid leave under the Family Medical Leave Act. In theory, the purpose is to self-quarantine, recuperate or care for family members who are idled or afflicted, but in reality, it opens the door for anyone who wants to game the system.”
Later in March, he did vote for the $2.2 trillion plan that provided loans to big and small businesses, state and local aid and extended unemployment benefits. He warned that while the package threatens to destabilize the government’s fiscal status, “in order to deal with the future problems this bill creates, we must first deal with the immediate crisis by arresting the damage caused by recent actions that have laid waste to our prosperity and plunged our nation into a sudden and deep recession.”
This story was originally published May 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Is California’s stay-at-home order violating your civil rights? Tom McClintock wants to help."
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