Futile Travel Bans
One individual right thought so fundamental as to not need enumeration in the Constitution is the right to travel. According to the Supreme Court, there are three aspects to this right:
It protects the right of a citizen of one State to enter and to leave another State, the right to be treated as a welcome visitor rather than an unfriendly alien when temporarily present in the second State, and, for those travelers who elect to become permanent residents, the right to be treated like other citizens of that State. Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489, 500 (1990).
The government has the ability to ban foreigners from coming to our shores, but there were a lot more restrictions on free movement during Covid. First, 43 U.S. states imposed “stay-at-home” orders. Many bans on travel were implemented, and many more were contemplated.
The U.S. even ordered Americans to be tested for Covid-19 before returning to the U.S. from abroad. The C.D.C. argued that this only caused a brief delay and so was licit under the Constitution, even though it is long determined that one of the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizenship under the 14th Amendment is the right to return. Under the police power belonging to their legislatures, the states have the power to impose “Quarantine” for health reasons. State governors used this power with a vengeance during Covid-19, as Messrs. Gostin and Chertoff note:
At the same time as he welcomed spring breakers on Florida beaches in 2020, Governor DeSantis of Florida threatened to detain and forcibly quarantine travelers to his state from New York. Later, when infection rates surged in Florida, New York’s Governor Cuomo threatened a retaliatory quarantine. Neither was actually put in place. Yet, state and local authorities in Rhode Island, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the Florida Keys did set up roadblocks to prevent travelers, even second homeowners, from entering states and select counties.
Whether these travel restrictions stopped even one death from Covid-19 is open to debate. Even now it is difficult to determine if it had any effect on the spread of the disease or on mortality rates. But without question locking people in their homes is the antithesis of “liberty.” There was no basis in science for the “6-foot rule,” which even Anthony Fauci has admitted. The government just imposed it. This rule, of course, impeded travel by air, bus or any other enclosed vehicle. The pressure not to travel was so great that mega fauna became bolder because of the lack of human activity.
The entire effort to restrain movement lasted for over a year. The imposition on Americans’ travel rights was not only a grave attack on a core civil liberty, but it also appears to have produced no discernible benefits.
April 7, 2025