Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry contended that the “Constitution doesn’t allow” Louisiana Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards to impose a statewide mask mandate.
Bel Edwards imposed the mandate last week as well as other measures, including bar closures and limits on indoor gatherings, in an effort to curb the spread of coronavirus in his state.
Speaking to Fox News’ “The Story” from his home where he is recovering from coronavirus himself, Landry told guest host Jon Scott why he has changed his approach from early in the pandemic.
“Does your own case, though, illustrate perhaps the utility of masks?” Scott asked. “You are not feeling symptoms. You’re feeling fine, but you don’t want to go out and spread it to other people. That’s what a lot of the scientific experts say justify the wearing of masks in public. Because people who might not know they are carrying the virus could spread it.”
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“Here’s what’s very important,” Landry responded. “It’s not about anti-mask. It’s that the Constitution doesn’t allow you to mandate in a very arbitrary, capricious and really broad sense in the way that the governor issued his executive orders.”
Landry contended that even Bel Edwards “knows that the order is extremely broad and vague” and “unconstitutional.” (RELATED: Judge Napolitano: Governments ‘Do Not Have The Authority’ To Mandate Mask-Wearing)
“I can appreciate it being aspirational, it’s just that we can’t mandate this type of conduct,” he continued. “Business owners certainly have the right to demand or to set forth a policy where they ask their patrons to wear masks. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that the government can’t sweep with such a broad brush. Again, if the emergency is based upon what numbers? Where is our benchmark?”
Scott pushed back with the number of cases and deaths in the state so far, 88,590 and “nearly 3,400,” respectively, and brought up the Landry’s own words supporting the original lockdown in March.
“So what has changed, general, since you made those remarks?” he asked.
“A lot has changed,” Landry insisted. “That was back in March when we were dealing with a novel virus that we really knew nothing about. We didn’t know the infection rate, it’s mortality rate. We didn’t know how to treat it. We were told at that time that two or three million people were going to die here in this country from the virus. Today, it’s happily different, right? We know, that thankfully those experts were wrong.” (RELATED: Rand Paul: ‘Let’s Open The Economy, Open The Schools’)
Landry cited improvements on the infection and transmission rates as well as more effective treatments.
“The number of deaths has fallen dramatically,” he concluded. “So again the facts change. So again you have to remember all of these governors were operating under emergency orders. And if the emergency changes and the threat changes then their level of mandating has to change as well. That’s just Constitutional, right? And in fact, in Louisiana, it’s not only Constitutional at the state and federal level, but it’s also at the statutory level as well. When facts change, his edicts have to change as well.”