(To read the full Policy Tip Sheet, click here.)
Key Takeaways:
- The Uniform Law Commission (ULC) has drafted a model bill—the Public-Health Emergency Authority Act (PHEAA)—that would both formally institutionalize the executive emergency powers wielded by state governors during the COVID-19 pandemic while also significantly strengthening them.
- Considering the ULC’s established degradations of individual rights and societal welfare, policymakers should tread carefully when considering anything the ULC promotes. This is especially true of the PHEAA.
- The vagueness of the PHEAA’s definition of a public-health emergency allows governors to abuse their power by declaring an emergency with little to no knowledge of the potential health risk.
- Governors can unilaterally renew emergency declarations with no input from state legislatures, and there is no limit upon the number of times such declarations can be renewed.
- Governors are not required under the PHEAA to possess a strong premise for the original declaration of such emergencies or for their renewal, nor are they responsible for justifying the myriad measures that can be implemented to fundamentally alter society by restricting individual freedom.
- Such restrictive measures include commandeering resources and physical property, quarantining individuals, restricting freedom of movement, surveilling citizens, and culling animal populations, among many more powers.
- The PHEAA allows governors to impose such measures without input from the legislature, fundamentally destroying institutional checks and balances and the entire concept of separation of powers.
- Legislators who value individual liberties—and who want to possess even a semblance of power to protect the rights of their constituents during any nebulously defined public health emergency scenario—should approach the PHEAA with extreme caution.
Kendyl Turner is a fellow with the American Journey Experience: Freedom Rising Fellowship Program and a policy advisor for The Heartland Institute.
Jack McPherrin is The Heartland Institute’s research editor, as well as a research fellow within Heartland’s Emerging Issues Center.
