Posse Comitatus and Interstate Travel Bans

Gene HealyIn the space of a  few hours on Saturday, President Trump went fromthreatening an ALL-CAPS federal “QUARANTINE of developing ‘hot spots’, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut” to… having CDC issue a“strong Travel Advisory” for the tristate area instead.It ’s hardly the first time this president has floated some eye‐​poppingly authoritarian proposal, only to back away from the Rubicon shortly thereafter. By now, the pattern should be familiar:Trump hits “send tweet” on some crank theory of absolute executive power. Law professors and pundits cancel their weekend plans, scrambling to figure out “Can hedo that? ”—only to realize, weeks later, that they needn’t have taken him literally or seriously.But when I  wrote that inReason magazine a  year ago, “weekend plans” were still a thing. In the pre‐​COVID‐​19 era, it was usually safe to take the president’s autocratic reveries with a grain of salt. We’re in new territory now. The pressures for bold action in times of crisis have ledfar cooler ‐​headed presidents to make desperate and dangerous moves, and there arefar rougher days ahead. Our radically changed circumstances make this particular proposal worth worrying about.Where would the federal government get the manpower to enforce a  Tristate‐​area quarantine?A number of questions come to mind:first among them, “can hedo that? ”—is there any plausible legal authority for a domestic Travel Ban encirc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs