One Year of COVID-19 and the Constitution

As the world reflects on the anniversaries of COVID-19 lockdowns this week, this episode recaps the variety of constitutional issues sparked by the pandemic. Joshua Matz—a lawyer and partner at Kaplan Hecker and Fink LLP who successfully defended a Kentucky coronavirus-related public health order before the U.S. Supreme Court—and Adam White, a professor at George Mason Law and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied COVID-19-related constitutional issues—join host Jeffrey Rosen. They explore how the pandemic has fueled debates over governmental power to handle public health crises while balancing individual rights and liberties; the First Amendment rights of religious institutions in the face of shutdowns and other orders; state versus federal power; how courts ruled on voting rights issues during the 2020 election in the midst of the pandemic; how COVID-19 has affected inmates, immigrants, detainees and the criminal justice system, and more. Additional resources and transcript available at constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/media-library. Questions or comments about the podcast? Email us at [email protected].