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As Americans in various U.S. cities began demonstrating in April 2020 for the relaxation of social distancing and lockdown restrictions enacted to blunt the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease, some protesters claimed that such restrictions were unconstitutional infringements of individual rights. One example of such claims was a social media post that asserted that citizens arrested for violating shutdown orders could win damages in court because the constitution supersedes any other law: However, the basic premise of this message was wrong. Measures enacted to protect the public health, both during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and in earlier health crises, have consistently been upheld against challenges in U.S. courts. For example, on May 6, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift a shutdown order issued by the governor of Pennsylvania requiring all non-life-sustaining businesses to temporarily close: As well, in their survey of pandemic-related law, the American Bar Association (ABA) noted that: In a broader sense, this message is also wrong in that individuals do not have a right to defy laws they disagree with and then collect damages if those laws are enforced against them. Certainly individuals can mount challenges to laws on various grounds (e.g., those laws are unconstitutional, are in conflict with other laws, are contrary to public policy, etc.), but they cannot take it upon themselves to decide those laws are not valid and pre-emptively ignore them with impunity.
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