It is absolutely incredible that it has taken this long for a federal court to rule a state governor's lockdown order unconstitutional.

But Judge Stickman did this situation justice. His order is a treatise on constitutional law. It's brilliant.

https://www.scribd.com/document/476017344/Judge-Stickman-s-order-in-Butler-County-v-Wolf#download

"Good intentions toward a laudable end are not alone enough to uphold governmental action against a constitutional challenge. Indeed, the greatest threats to our system of constitutional liberties may arise when the ends are laudable, and the intent is good."

"[Judicial] deference cannot go on forever. It is no longer March. It is now September and the record makes clear that Defendants have no anticipated end date to their emergency interventions."

"The response to a pandemic (or any emergency) cannot be permitted to undermine our system of constitutional liberties or the system of checks and balances protecting those liberties."

"Defendants attempt to justify their extraordinary 'mitigation' efforts by pointing to actions taken to combat Spanish Flu...

But an examination of the history of mitigation efforts in response to Spanish Flu...reveals that nothing remotely approximating lockdowns were imposed."

"[Lockdowns] have never been used in response to any other disease in our history. They were not recommendations made by the CDC. They were unheard of by the people in this nation until just this year."

"The stay-at-home orders impacted liberties not merely limited to the act of traveling, but the very liberty interests arising from the fruits of travel, such as the right of association and even the right to privacy--i.e, the right simply to be left alone."

"Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional unless the government can demonstrate that they burden no more liberty than is reasonably necessary."

"It is paradoxical that in an effort to keep people apart, Defendants' business closure orders permitted to remain in business the largest retailers with the highest occupancy limits."

"[Defendants] were not merely coming up with a draft of some theoretical white paper, but rather, determining who could work and who could not, who could earn a paycheck and who would be unemployed--and for some--which businesses would live, and which would die."

"An economy is not a machine that can be shut down and restarted at will by government. It is an organic system made up of free people each pursuing their dreams. The ability to support oneself is essential to free people in a free economy."

"Defendants' orders treated [the Business Plaintiffs] differently than their larger competitors, which were permitted to remain open and continue offering the same products that Plaintiffs were forbidden from selling."

"Closing [a local furniture store] did not keep at home a consumer looking to buy a chair or lamp, it just sent him to Walmart. Refusing to allow the Salon Plaintiffs to sell shampoo or hairbrushes...just sent the consumer to Walgreens or Target."

"The Constitution cannot accept the concept of a 'new normal' where the basic liberties of the people can be subordinated to open-ended emergency mitigation measures.

Rather, the Constitution sets certain lines that may not be crossed, even in an emergency."