(January 5, 2023)
Victories for Life and Liberty
By: Brian Almon
Two positive things happened on the legal front in Idaho today, events that should make all champions of liberty cheer.
First, new Attorney General Raúl Labrador announced that his office has moved to drop the charges of trespassing against Sara Brady, the Meridian park mom who was arrested for violating Covid lockdown orders. Brady had been dragged through the court system for nearly three years as trial dates were continually rescheduled, forcing her to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Former AG Lawrence Wasden refused to intervene, but Labrador has done the right thing in his first week in office.
The potential dismissal of these charges is a victory for liberty. Closing down city parks was just one of many hundreds of immoral and illegal actions taken by governments at all levels in the name of stopping the Covid-19 pandemic, along with forcing businesses to close, forcing mask mandates on the public, and arresting parishioners in Moscow. While some condemn Brady for supposedly breaking the law, rather than taking the issue up with municipal officials or her state legislators, I believe she was acting in the same spirit as Rosa Parks and Samuel Adams, using civil disobedience to bring attention to an unjust and immoral rule.
Now that the Covid lockdowns have been (mostly) lifted, we must hold our elected officials and civil bureaucrats accountable for what they did. Ending the persecution of a mom who took her children to the park is a great start.
The second great victory today came out of the Idaho Supreme Court. In a 3-2 decision, the Court upheld the ban on abortion that our representatives passed in the last two years. Now that the US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, it is up to the states to decide how to regulate abortion. Idaho, as a deep red state with a long tradition of defending life and liberty, naturally chose to ban the barbaric practice, and God willing it will never be legal to kill an unborn child within our borders again.
We cannot control what other states do, but we can ensure that Idaho is a sanctuary for life.
The fact that this decision was so close, and that two of the five justices maintained that Idaho women really do have the right to kill their unborn children, is an indictment of the leadership of our state. Despite being a red state, despite Republican control of our entire state government for the last several decades, two of our Supreme Court justices would have imposed abortion on Idaho. How did these two slip through the cracks and earn such confidence from our Republican leaders that they were appointed to our highest bench?
Thank God that the Court arrived at the proper decision, but let this be a reminder of the work we have yet to do. We are slowly but surely making Idaho redder, but we cannot rest on our laurels, or we will surely go the way of Colorado, Oregon, and California. We must keep our focus on all levers of power, from the governor’s office and the legislature to the court system to our county and municipal councils. We have much work to do, especially considering the fact that Planned Parenthood and their anti-natal friends are preparing a citizen’s initiative imposing abortion as we speak.
Yet this is a day to celebrate. The very purpose of government, outlined by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, is to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens. The state of Idaho today took decisive action to protect liberty and life, and for that we should be grateful. Onward!
