OPINION:
Few people want to relive the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who leads the nation’s largest swing state and often hints at his presidential ambitions, seems nostalgic for the draconian policies that defined the era.
In 2021, after suffering a year of pandemic lockdowns, voters passed two amendments that capped the governor’s emergency declarations at 21 days. They also gave the legislature the power to end or extend them without his signature.
It was a rare, resounding statement that the good people of our great commonwealth do not want a single officeholder governing by decree.
However, Mr. Shapiro wants to circumvent that mandate. His administration has quietly advanced 500 pages of sweeping changes to Pennsylvania’s health code, claiming expansive disease-control powers through executive regulation without the legislature’s approval.
The new regulations even replace the words “mother” and “woman” with “postpartum individual” and “birthing individual.”
If adopted, this rewrite would hand the state’s Department of Health many of the exact powers that voters stripped from the governor’s office just a few years ago.
Still, the issue is not diseases or vaccines. It is and always has been government overreach.
Tellingly, the administration acknowledges that this language is a direct response to prior legal defeats. In Corman v. Acting Secretary of Health, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously struck down a statewide school mask mandate as exceeding the department’s legal authority.
Mr. Shapiro is not asking the legislature to rebuild that authority. He is asking his own agency to write itself into power, and that power should worry every Pennsylvanian who values a constitutional republic answerable to its people.
Start with the text of the regulation itself. The Department of Health would gain express authority to impose “disease-control measures,” not just to monitor outbreaks but to actively “prevent, contain, or mitigate” them. That likely means masking, distancing, facility closures and more.
It gets worse.
New provisions would let health department representatives enter homes, schools, colleges and “other locations as necessary” during an investigation — all without a warrant. Existing court rulings and laws protect against officials breaking down doors, but the rules seem to impose no limits on the Department of Health’s authority.
Schools would be required to grant officials private access to students during the school day for contact tracing, without requiring parental notification or consent. A new mandatory reporting regime would automatically feed private details of anyone vaccinated in the commonwealth (including their name, birth date, address, race, ethnicity and more) into a centralized government database — unless citizens opt out in writing.
This is precisely the executive overreach that Pennsylvanians rejected during the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions five years ago. The 2021 constitutional amendments explicitly prohibited unilateral executive power grabs during declared emergencies, but Mr. Shapiro’s proposed changes do not require an emergency to take effect.
We have already lived through the tragedies of what happens when one person in the governor’s mansion decides that the rules do not apply to him. We endured an era of unchecked government control that infringed upon our individual liberty. Small businesses closed their doors forever. Students fell behind academically — and continue to struggle today — after the schools refused to reopen.
Families were kept from visiting dying relatives.
The very last thing Pennsylvanians want to do is relive that nightmare.
This goes well beyond “public health.” Nobody — except for the governor — has asked for warrantless entry into homes and schools, easy access to private medical records and more statewide mandates imposed by the governor and unelected regulators.
The public comment period for these abusive regulations is now open. Pennsylvanians who rejected them in 2021 should do so again, loudly, before this rule ever reaches final form.
Pennsylvanians have led efforts to ensure checks and balances in our state government. Executive overreach is unacceptable anywhere, but it is especially problematic in Pennsylvania, as Mr. Shapiro’s actions contradict the will of the people.
We live in a constitutional republic that respects the separation of powers and the rule of law, and Mr. Shapiro needs to remember that. We are not going back to pandemic-era lockdowns and government oppression.
• Megan Martin is chief operating officer and general counsel for the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free market think tank.
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