Today the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled for Governor Charlie Baker in a lawsuit underwritten by Charles Koch and sponsored by Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance/Fiscal Alliance Foundation in which MFA sought to undo the governor’s emergency public health powers—just as Covid-19 is raging across the land. It wasn’t close.
This was really a case about conflicting ideologies. On one side is the view that government should be empowered to help people to do needed things the people cannot do for themselves (the view of Abraham Lincoln, by the way) versus Koch’s ideology, which is that government should do nothing except to protect private property.
The Court unanimously turned aside each of the arguments made by appellants, a cohort of businesses and churches assembled as a front for Koch/MassFiscal. Apparently, the justices were more interested in lawful exertion of government authority in a public health crisis than in Charles Koch’s ideology. The Court recognized that “COVID-19 has taken a devastating toll on the Commonwealth, the United States, and the world.” It has had a “medical toll” and a “personal toll” that has been “immeasurable”:
Behind every infection and every death are those who could not visit loved ones in the hospital due to visitation restrictions, or who could not grieve the loss of loved ones with family and friends in the traditional manner. Family and friends had to isolate from one another, and visiting a loved one in another country became impossible, or nearly so. COVID-19 and the attendant containment measures have also resulted in high unemployment, economic hardship, and shuttered businesses.
In other words, the justices had in mind a humane and compassionate understanding of the suffering wrought by this terrible disease.
The Court easily turned aside each of the arguments of Koch’s attorney, a functionary from a tax deductible legal front called New Civil Liberties Alliance. NCLA is underwritten by the Charles Koch Foundation, $1 million in each of 2017 and 2018; other right wing donors fill out the coffers. It’s been a long time since I’ve practiced law so I’ll leave the legal analysis to others but here’s little flavor of the SJC brushing aside NCLA’s attack on the governor’s authority under the Civil Defense Act:
where, as here, the language of a statute “is unambiguous and when its application ‘would not lead to an “absurd result,” or contravene the Legislature’s clear intent,'” we follow the plain language.
The SJC didn’t break a sweat on the other arguments made by NCLA, either. You can access the decision in Desrosiers v. The Governor here and a really good account in the Boston Globe by Travis Anderson, Matt Stout, and Martin Finucane here.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that without Charles Koch underwriting this mess, there is no lawsuit. And don’t overlook that the dark money front Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance was perfectly willing—overjoyed actually—to front for Koch on this. Does anyone want to die, or say goodbye to a loved one, or care for a seriously ill relative, for Charles Koch’s extremism?
According to the state’s Coronavirus Dashboard over 259,000 of our neighbors and friends have fallen ill. The Wednesday December 9 update shows there were 5,675 new cases in Massachusetts, over 61,000 active cases, 89 newly reported deaths.
Money never sleeps. Follow the money.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy.]