BENTON – H’s Bar in Belleville claims the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a precedent that District Judge Staci Yandle relied on when she denied its right to stay open.
The bar moved to stay lockdown enforcement on Dec. 1, in light of the Supreme Court’s Nov. 25 decision favoring religious expression in New York.
The Supreme Court held that Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1905 decision about smallpox vaccination, involved different analysis, rights, and restrictions.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that many lower courts have read Jacobson as an invitation to slacken their enforcement of constitutional liberties.
“Why have some mistaken this Court’s modest decision in Jacobson for a towering authority that overshadows the Constitution during a pandemic?” Gorsuch asked.
“Nothing in Jacobson purported to address, let alone approve, such serious and long lasting intrusions into settled constitutional rights.”
Yandle cited Jacobson as authority for restriction of rights on Nov. 21, when she denied a preliminary injunction for H’s Bar.
She wrote that the Court rejected the claim of plaintiff Jacobson that mandatory vaccination violated his personal autonomy.
“In doing so, the Court defined the expanse of the state police power, holding that the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand,” Yandle wrote.
“This police power encompasses such authority reasonably necessary to guard and protect public health and public safety, including protecting communities against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”
She wrote that courts across the country, relying on Jacobson, have declined to enjoin restrictions aimed at protecting the public against the coronavirus.
H’s Bar counsel Thomas Maag appealed her ruling to the Seventh Circuit in Chicago.
After the Supreme Court issued its opinion, he asked Yandle to stay lockdown enforcement pending the appeal.
“Plaintiff is likely to win on appeal,” he wrote.
He claims St. Clair County is trying to revoke the bar’s license to operate and has sought to seize its liquor license without a warrant.
He claims St. Clair County threatened employees and customers with arrest on the night before Thanksgiving.
Without a stay, it is likely if not certain that H’s Bar would cease to exist, Maag wrote.