Could a Supreme Court decision open the door to legal sanctions?

Michigan’s governor continues to violate the law.

Tomorrow begins that part of the process where our state’s highest court decides whether it agrees with our laws and constitution.  It will decide whether it will join the executive branch and perform legal ju-jitsu to ‘protect’ Michigan citizens from the pandemic, or whether it will take the absolute legal and uncomfortable route of holding each of the branches to the purposefully limited and separated authority they wield.

There are reasons each branch of our government hold powers that are separate and distinct.  This pandemic has very much revealed what happens when that separation is not upheld immediately.  People through no act of their own will die needlessly.

A case before the Michigan Supreme Court suggest as much.  An opinion piece in USA today highlights the plaintiff’s many concerns for the patients under his care.

One of my patients came to see me when he felt like he had nowhere else to turn. The governor’s orders prevented him from getting regular treatment for his diabetes. By the time he came to me, he was in a full-on medical emergency. He told me about an odor coming from his foot — it turned out to be gangrene. His kidneys were in full-blown failure.

We rushed him to the nearest hospital, but it was too late. His foot had to be amputated. And then, just days later, he died from complications.

None of this trauma had to happen. But happen it did, because of shortsighted executive orders issued unilaterally by Gov. Whitmer.

Irresponsible action from the governor, and the slow-to-act courts have resulted in misery and death for Michiganians.

Add to this the already huge death numbers of those exposed to the China virus in nursing homes due to the governor’s actions, it should give pause to those who think government protects us in any meaningful way.  Clearly we cannot put our faith in those who are willing to break the law, if even ‘for our own good.’

Malfeasance and criminal disregard for the law must have consequence.

Such a concept is no stranger to the rest of us.  Should it give pause to the state’s highest court as deliberations are made?  Should the court waffle in it’s responsibilities in order to protect the sanctity of absolute government authority, or should it uphold the law which renders government leaders accountable and responsible?

And should an affirmative verdict that the governor has broken the law be issued, what are the consequences?  What should they be?

We know.  We know what the answer is.

And it should never have to be decided in such a way again.