Justice Alito Says COVID-19 Put Americans’ Constitutional Rights To Test … And Many Failed

Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito, joining Fox News for an interview, reflected on the risks certain responses to the COVID-19 pandemic posed to the rights guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution.

In preparation for the Oct. 6 release of his new book, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country,” Alito spoke with “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream to discuss some of the cases in his career and the application of his jurisprudence.

During the interview, Bream asked Alito about a Nov. 12, 2020, speech he delivered virtually to the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. The conservative appointee of former President George W. Bush had criticized the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions for resulting in “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty.” While cautioning he was neither diminishing the virus’s real threat to public health nor if the restrictions “represent good public policy,” Alito stated it was an “indisputable statement of fact” that “we have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020.” He had also characterized the restrictions as a “constitutional stress test.”

Critics accused Alito of being too partisan in his remarks.

In response, Alito doubled down and said the pandemic was a “stress test” of Americans’ constitutional rights.

“I think it was a stress test of our constitutional rights,” Alito said during the interview. “It put our loyalty to those constitutional rights, our dedication to those constitutional rights, to the test.”

WATCH:

📺 Embedded media — coming soon