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just-juan-post

Replace "18-22 year olds" with "blacks" or "Muslims"

Is it still ethical? Legal? Effective?

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Fair point, funny how capriciously we treat the rights and welfare of the young these days.

Try cutting the social security COLA by 1%? Get a riot.

Destroy the economic livelihoods of a generation of new entrants to the economy? No problemo, my stocks and real estate portfolio is doing great!

This suggests younger cohorts need robust efforts to protect their rights when continued curtailment is attempted by those who aren’t offering up sufficient compensation and recourse for the impacted.

Can’t expect a generation to go through two economic catastrophes (GFC, Covid) without support and expect positive results. Things will just go from bad to worse.

Perhaps they should vote.

Ah but that’s the irony. In the US the young overwhelmingly vote for the side that supports these authoritarian shutdowns. I remember when the authoritarians were on the right and the freedom lovers on the left. Oh, how times have changed.

(Compare South Dakota, right-leaning and NEVER locked down, to my home state of California, which is so democrat-leaning that we’re a de facto single party state)

Enforcing sensible public health policy in the middle of a raging, deadly, global pandemic is hardly authoritarian. We are being asked to put a little piece of cloth over our faces and to stay at home when we don’t have to go out. Yet people are acting like we are being loaded onto the trains. Have we so completely lost our sense of perspective?

We're talking here about an order to prohibit all gatherings among young people. That's a huge restriction of 1a right to peaceable assembly.

I happen to think mask mandates are ridiculous too but that's besides the point.

It is not without precedent. Courts have upheld government's power to enforce curfews, which limit gatherings of adults, to protect public safety and property. I would like to see a court weigh in the constitutionality of a curfew for the narrow purpose of protecting the public from a pandemic. You may end up being right. I don't think the SCOTUS has weighed in on curfews yet.

I'd argue that younger people are less likely to vote because they're less likely to find politicians who they want to vote for, so just telling them to vote largely misses the point.

> I'd argue that younger people are less likely to vote because they're less likely to find politicians who they want to vote for, so just telling them to vote largely misses the point.

So vote and get active in a political party, then?

The level of involvement in politics required to influence who's on the ballot is quite a big commitment, and I think it's entirely reasonable for people to expect representation even if they don't have time for that.

The young can never outvite the old because the old are 65-90, but the young are 18-25 at best. The latter cohort is by definition several times smaller.

Why are 16 year old 'too immature' to vote by 90 year olds eligible? You can vote even if you are mentally ill.

Do schoolchildren have no interests at all that deserve at least some representation? Imagine we had a few representatives in parloament talking about their issues, that would probably improve discourse.

People who receive social security actually vote, unlike the young.

Many towns make it difficult for college students to vote in local elections.

Colorado is not like that. You have mail in ballots in CO and can register along with a driver's license. You need only one piece of mail addressed to you to do so.

I want pictures if that fraction of the population population riots.

Replace 18-22 year olds with "regular people"

It's clearly not legal.

Whether it's ethical or effective is in doubt, given herd immunity arguments, Sweden, the Constitution, etc.

Replace it with Christian. Churches have been shut down for the duration in many parts of Colorado including boulder.

Clearly closing church is not the same as banning all gatherings of christians, in the same manner as chosing pubs is not a ban on drinking

Actually, it’s worse since the ban is on any gathering including 18-22 year olds

It's interesting how we can use age (selectively) as a discriminator, but within a certain range and in certain contexts, it's seen as "bad" to discriminate.

Most wouldn't say the concept of a retirement age is discriminatory, nor the concept of age of consent or minimum age to purchase alcohol, or pricing insurance rates differently based on age.

Somehow this application of age discrimination seems to cross the line for many people, though. I'm genuinely curious as to why.

Old enough to choose to die for their country in the military but not old enough safely hang out with friends?

Age limits make sense in some contexts but we need some consistency.

Fun fact: In the US, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act forbids employment discrimination based on age against people over 40. It’s legal to discriminate against young people based on age.

It’s often legal to discriminate by age (that is literally what the drinking, driving, and smoking age limits are), but I believe that the government must have a compelling interest in the restriction. This one seems extremely shaky to me, but as is common it’s likely that a lot of people will end up paying fines since they can’t afford to fight an order that may not stand up to judicial scrutiny.

The problem is while technically Jacobson v Massachusetts is supposed to declare unreasonable restrictions unconstitutional, in practice it has allowed forced vaccination, forced sterilization, and forced detention. Oops!

This is completely unrelated to what I said, to the point where it’s genuinely confusing what you’re going on about.

Sorry for not making the connection clear enough. You mentioned a “compelling interest”; this is the same logic that was decided in Jacobson v Massachusetts which is the foundation for US case law regarding this topic.

My point is that this does fall under that reasoning.

Persons within the age range of 18-22 are not a protected class, so this does seem legal. Effective, maybe? I assume this is based on the idea that this age group is acting as super spreaders.

Ethical? That's a judgment call. I say yes, personally.

I don't see how it isn't agains the 1st amendment right to peaceably assemble. I could see it if it was a blanket lock down, maybe even on just 18-22 year olds, but it still has carve outs for going to school or work. Maybe someone with more experience could chime in, but I don't see how the government restricting how people can gather is constitutional. Only being allowed to participate in government approved activities is a slippery slope I'd rather we don't get started down.

If "government approved" is the line you are worried about, take a look at driver's licenses and food selling.

> I don't see how it isn't against the 1st amendment right to peaceably assemble.

I assume that there are a number of factors here, most notably that the assembling, while peaceful, poses a considerable danger to the public. Certainly it would be nice to see some sort of carve out for explicit protesting but there you go.

All allowed activities are government approved activities.

>I don't see how the government restricting how people can gather is constitutional

None of the rights in the bill of rights are absolute. For better or for worse, the courts have decided that pretty much every right you have can be limited in the name of public safety.

If I'm in jail, the warden has no obligation to let me out if I want to go to my best friend's birthday party. If I try to stage an unpermitted protest in the middle of the street, I will eventually be removed

Is the implication here that subdivisions of humans on attributes should all be equally valid or invalid, irrespective of the attribute? Because that seems silly.

The law does define the concept of “protected class.” It includes race, religion, gender and yes age (but only above age 40).

If it's so silly, then they should remove it from the Constitution

> No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

Why though?

> Is it still ethical?

No, it wouldn't be. All young people, regardless of race, deserve equal protection from their own stupidity.

> Legal?

No, it wouldn't be.

> Effective?

For those lucky young people, it would be. But that screws all the young people of other races/religions.

At 21 I was out of university with master's degree in physics, working full time and providing for my family (however small) and making all kinds of life choices. Where would I be in your book?

An extreme rarity, probably.

I was not the only graduate ;) There were many others like myself. In the old and long gone Soviet Union some people (myself included) went to University straight after school and at that time one would finish school at 17 (sometimes 16).

Probably not at a party with others your age.

Makes sense then that they'd be banned from visiting anyone.

I wouldn't drive past a school at a 100 miles/hr if the law allowed it, but others would.

Laws aren't targeted at people who do no wrong, but those people still get protection from those laws.

> Where would I be in your book?

You're safer because the idiots around you who would be doing stupid things have a lower chance of infecting you and your grandma.

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