From the Desk of :
Douglas V. Gibbs
Constitutional Instructor
constitutionspeaker@yahoo.com
November 17, 2020
Board of Supervisors
County of Orange
333 W. Santa Ana Blvd.
Santa Ana, CA 92701
Dear honorable members of the
Orange County Board of Supervisors:
The Orange County Board of
Supervisors website under “meetings and agendas” begins with the following
paragraph:
California
Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-33-20 on March 19, 2020, for the
preservation of public health and safety throughout the entire State of
California and to heed the State public health directives from the Department of
Public Health. The Governor’s Executive Order is found at the following URL:
https://covid19.ca.gov/img/N-33-20.pdf. Pursuant to the Executive Order, to
protect public health, the State Public Health Officer and Director of the
California Department of Public Health have ordered all individuals living in
the State of California to stay home or at their place of residence except as
needed to maintain continuity of operations of the federal critical
infrastructure sectors, as outlined at
https://www.cisa.gov/identifying-critical-infrastructure-during-covid-19.
We have been instructed to “heed”
Governor Newsom’s executive order and the State public health directives from
the Department of Public Health.
In Newsom’s order it specifically
states, “All residents are to heed any orders and guidance.”1
The definition of the word “heed”
is “to give consideration to.” The
language used does not state we “must obey.”
Governor Newsom’s order is for us to take his advice, and that of the
California Department of Public Health, into consideration when making
decisions.
That goes for you, the members of
the Orange County Board of Supervisors, as well. You have not been ordered by the governor to
perform his wishes. As county officials,
you are free to make a decision one way, or another, regarding Orange County’s
next step in dealing with the alleged pandemic crisis.
I get it. You have a very difficult decision before
you. It is a decision that is being wrestled
with not only here in our great country, but around the entire world. My concern is that you may be approaching
this very serious situation without taking into consideration the whole
story. I was talking to a member of the
Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Jeff Hewitt, the lone member of that
board pushing for opening up the county, and he told me a shocking revelation
that is probably true here in Orange County, as well. He said that the Riverside County board was
keeping the county closed because if they completely opened it up Sacramento
had threatened that they would keep one hundred and forty four million dollars
that would normally go to the county in the next fiscal year. Businesses in the county, meanwhile, are
losing hundreds of millions of dollars per week. Do you hear that? The politicians have been sacrificing
business revenue and jobs in the county to the tune of hundreds of millions of
dollars per week in order to preserve a promise of one hundred and forty four
million dollars from Sacramento. Is that
the case here? If so, and I am guessing
it is, then what you are telling us is that you aren’t working for the good
people who voted you in, you are working for the con-artists who control
Sacramento. You have sacrificed your
voters for a promise of a pittance.
In the eyes of many of your
voters, you have betrayed your constituents in the name of a dollar amount far
less than what they are losing for a lie and a scam.
On top of all of that, keeping
the county shut down is a violation of the law, and violations of both the U.S.
Constitution and the State Constitution.
And you are doing so through the fear of losing less money than the
businesses in your county have been losing, and the fear of executive orders
that don’t even hold the power of the law.
America was built on the
principles of liberty, and natural law.
Natural law is based on our God-given rights, and the last time I
checked, none of the clauses in the Bill of Rights includes an asterisk that
says, “unless there’s a virus.” Yet,
without even the batting of an eyelid, people like you have taken away
everyone’s basic rights in the name of safety from a virus that has, for most
people, a better than 99% recovery rate.2
While the governor has made
mandates through executive order, and health services departments have made
demands often accompanied by threats that include fines, or the loss of being
able to do business, the reality is that in government none of those policies
may have the full force of the law unless the laws were passed by the
legislature, and they haven’t been.
While the California Health & Safety Code3 sections
101029, 101030, 101040, and 101080 gives counties in health emergencies certain
powers, and 101030 gives a county health officer the authority to order
quarantines, there are no authorities listed that includes quarantining healthy
people. According to lawyer Mark Meuser,
who also ran for State Secretary of State two years ago, “they may issue
quarantine policy regarding individuals on a case by case basis, but they do
not have the authority to order a county wide shelter in place law since the
law only allows ‘adequate isolation of each case.’”4
In the California Health and
Safety code section 120225 it uses language that indicates quarantine laws were
designed to quarantine an individual or specific location, not an entire
community or organization.
I have been told the governor has
the power to make law during this crisis because the legislature gave those
powers to him. However, it says in
Article IV., Section 1 of the California State Constitution that “The
legislative power of this State is vested in the California legislature.” The word vested means that the power is
granted to the legislature and that the power is irrevocable. In other words, the legislature cannot
legally give that power away; or as the American Dictionary of the English
Language by Noah Webster, 1828 states, “becoming permanent, as a right or title”.5
In Article I, Section 7, subsection
(a) of the California State Constitution6 it says that “A person may
not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The 14th Amendment’s “due process
clause” says the same. The last time I
checked, a virus is not due process.
The U.S. Constitution in Article
I, Section 107 also indicates that “No State shall…pass any…law
impairing the obligation of contracts.”
That includes service contracts, employment contracts, independent
contractor contracts, and so forth. While
some courts have argued the general welfare, health, or common good may allow
for necessary violations, the clause itself, nor the notes from the time period
that the Constitution was written, reveal any exemptions from the clause. So, I must ask, “How many contracts are being
impaired due to the State’s and county’s actions in relation to their policies
concerning the COVID-19 issue?” If any
of those actions or policies impair the obligation of any contracts, the State,
and the county, are in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The COVID-19 policies have also
shut down churches around the country, and some of the courts have erroneously
ruled that prohibiting the free exercise of religion was fine during the
pandemic; which is in direct violation of both the U.S. Constitution and the
State Constitution. In September of 2014
the University of San Francisco Law Review published an article titled
“California Constitutional Law: The Religion Clauses” by David A. Carrillo and
Shane G. Smith.8 On pages 691
and 692 of that publication the authors wrote the following:
“Neither
[federal or State government] can force nor influence a person to go to or to
remain away from church against his will…No person can be punished for…church
attendance or non-attendance.”
Yet, churches have been closed,
or limited in the number of attendees they may receive, in clear violation of
both the U.S. and California State Constitutions.
And for what?
A September report by the CDC9
found that more than 70 percent of COVID-positive patients contracted the virus
in spite of faithful mask wearing while in public. 14 percent of patients who said they “often”
wore masks were also infected. Only 4
percent of the COVID-positive patients said they “never” wore masks in the 14
days before the onset of the illness. In
fact, an October journal report references a 2015 study10 on cloth
mask efficiency (when compared to medical masks) that found rates of infection
were actually “consistently higher”.
Cloth masks are problematic because they retain moister and have poor
filtration. The CDC, in that study,
states that their “finding suggests that risk for infection was higher for
those wearing cloth masks.” In Sweden no
masks are being worn and they have a much lower infection rate than their
European neighbors.11
As for the deadliness of
COVID-19? The CDC has also admitted the
recovery rate is well over 99 percent.12 Only 6 percent of reported COVID-19 deaths
came directly from the virus (less than 10,000 countrywide) while a whopping 94
percent of the deaths attributed to the coronavirus were from people who were
also those who had two to three serious underlying conditions.13
In an article in the California
Globe titled “Influenza Pandemic Peer Reviewed Study: ‘There is no basis for
Quarantine’”14, a 2006 study on Disease Mitigation Measures in
the Control of Pandemic Influenza” was quoted as indicating “there is no
basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals.” The study also concluded that “the ordinary
surgical mask does little to prevent inhalation of droplets bearing influenza
virus.”
In short, the information being
used to defend COVID policies of mandating mask wearing, and shutting down our
economy and society with lockdown orders is erroneous, and the policies
themselves are illegal and unconstitutional.
Science says we have done more damage than good when it comes to dealing
with this virus, and politically the same can be said for what we have done to the
economic health of our businesses, and those individuals who have not been allowed
to participate in a normal social environment.
I urge you, for it is your duty to defend We the People, the law, and
the constitutions of both the United States and the State of California, to
break the cycle we have been experiencing, and open up the County of Orange. To do otherwise would be a disservice to your
constituents, and would be a direct violation of the law.
Resources:
1.
“Heed.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary,
Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heed. Accessed 17
Nov. 2020.
2.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-20/coronavirus-serology-testing-la-county
Stanford epidemiologist warns that coronavirus crackdown is based on bad data
https://realconservativesunite.com/2020/03/25/we-re-going-to-be-fine-nobel-winning-biophysicist-predicts-quicker-covid-19-recovery/
3.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codesTOCSelected.xhtml?tocCode=HSC&tocTitle=+Health+and+Safety+Code+-+HSC
4.
https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/does-gov-newsom-have-the-power-to-shut-down-private-businesses-because-of-coronavirus/
5.
http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/vesting
6.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/const-toc.html
7.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
8.
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/usfblogs.usfca.edu/dist/7/272/files/2014/09/45-3-A3.pdf
9.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6936a5-H.pdf
… see table on page 1261
10.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.full
11.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/swedens-top-epidemiologist-says-we-see-no-point-in-wearing-masks-as-covid-19-cases-drop
12.
https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-implies-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-below-0-3/
13.
https://nypost.com/2020/08/31/94-of-americans-who-died-from-covid-19-had-contributing-conditions/
14.
https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/influenza-pandemic-peer-reviewed-study-there-is-no-basis-for-quarantine/
