How Massachusetts Annihilated Private Property Rights In The Name Of COVID Restrictions

By Ilya Feoktistov

Upholding draconian restrictions, the Massachusetts Supreme Court took away its citizens’ essential private property rights and gave them to the governor.

In the waning days of 2020, as COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts were summiting the highest peak of the pandemic, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) of Massachusetts decided that the First Amendment’s Assembly Clause does not protect private assembly by private citizens in “private homes.” According to the state’s high court, whether, when, and how the citizens of Massachusetts may gather in each other’s dens and bedrooms are all questions of “significant government interest” to the state’s governor, and are therefore within his regulatory power.

An appeal of this wrong decision, made in a case called Desrosiers v. Baker, is now among the 1,298 petitions that the U.S. Supreme Court will consider for review at its so-called Long Conference on Sept. 27. The odds that the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case are slim. The justices usually deny 99 percent of petitions for review, with only about a dozen cases making the cut.

The stakes, however, are high. As I argue in an amicus curiae brief I submitted in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the Desrosiers v. Baker petitioners, the decision went beyond merely weakening assembly rights in Massachusetts. The SJC also took away one of the most essential property rights of its citizens—the right to invite or exclude others from their own private property as they please—and gave it to the state’s governor instead.

Restricting Private Assembly In Your Home

full story at https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/21/how-massachusetts-annihilated-private-property-rights-in-the-name-of-covid-restrictions/