We Have the Receipts!
The current hottest topic in #nhpolitics is the nomination of Dan Will to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Much of the debate about Will’s fitness for the State Supreme Court involves whether Will, as the State’s Solicitor General, defended a lawsuit challenging former Governor Chris Sununu’s COVID-mandates by arguing that the government can suspend constitutional rights when it determines there is an emergency.
Will and his supporters have emphatically denied that he ever made such an argument. We have reviewed the objection that Will filed and we can say that he absolutely did make that argument. A link to the objection, which we encourage you to read for yourself.
Will argued that the court’s review of Sununu’s COVID-mandates should be limited to ONLY (1) whether the government acted in good faith and (2) whether there was any factual basis to believe the governmental action was necessary. In other words, Will’s argument was that government can infringe constitutional rights as long as there is a good faith basis to declare an emergency and there is any factual basis to believe the governmental action is needed to deal with the emergency.
It is completely accurate and fair to describe Will’s argument as an argument that the government can suspend constitutional rights by declaring an emergency, as the trial court did.
It is important to note that Will also argued that the COVID-mandates in issue did NOT infringe upon constitutional rights. This means that Will did not need to make the suspension-of-constitutional-rights argument to defend the COVID-mandates. That Will nonetheless chose to argue that constitutional rights can be suspended in an emergency, and indeed made it his lead argument, should be considered to reflect his view on how the constitution should be properly interpreted.
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