Stay home, ReOpenNC protesters

Hundreds of North Carolinians are planning to travel to Raleigh on Tuesday to protest Gov. Roy Cooper’s COVID-19 restrictions and urge him to reopen North Carolina. Maybe you’re considering joining them. It’s the second Raleigh protest, and like last week’s it will include people with genuine worries about jobs and livelihood and their financial futures.

We understand those concerns. We share them.

A warning, however. If larger weekend events in other states are any indication, this Raleigh protest might include confederate flags, other objectionable expressions, or political street theatre that has little to do with reopening an economy. Rosa Parks they ain’t.

There will, however, be a lot of talk about rights. The right to free speech and assembly. The right to make healthy choices and not to be told what you can and can’t do. It’s a worthy discussion, so before you contemplate a trip to Raleigh, let’s make clear one right you definitely have: the right to be wrong.

You were wrong, for example, if you thought your protest is a protected or essential activity. Cooper’s March 27 order required North Carolinians to stay at their residence, then listed the businesses and activities that are exceptions to the mandate. Protesting is not one of them. As the attorneys for ReOpenNC acknowledged in a letter to the governor Friday: “Like the Governor’s Order, Wake County’s Order, dated March 26, 2020, and subsequently amended on April 15, 2020, provides no exclusion for constitutionally protected activities, including, without limitation, First Amendment activities.”

The governor, however, retreated a bit late Monday, telling ReOpenNC that as long as social distancing was practiced, protests would be allowed. If protesters ignore distancing, as has happened at rallies across the U.S. , they face arrest.

You’re wrong, too, if you think such COVID-19 arrests or fines are unconstitutional. That’s what you hear from U.S. Sen Ted Cruz or U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, who is irresponsibly encouraging constituents to rally and said arresting protesters is “an intolerable violation of Constitutional Rights.”

Courts, however, have long had no problem with restrictions like those in North Carolina and other states so long as they are applied and enforced evenly and are justified by the public interest. The Supreme Court has specifically affirmed such police and state powers, the American Bar Association reiterated to its members last month.

If despite all of that you are willing to risk arrest to protest perceived injustice, then at least your actions have the noble veneer of civil disobedience. Except for this: You are endangering others — and yourself. If you leave home and participate in a rally in which people might congregate shoulder-to-shoulder, as has happened in similar protests, you risk spreading COVID-19 or becoming infected and bringing it back home.

If you don’t believe that — or if you somehow still believe that COVID-19 is overhyped and no more deadly that the common flu — then you are not merely wrong but in disagreement with health experts, Democratic and Republican leaders and even, belatedly, your president. Despite the country being mostly locked down for weeks, COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have passed 40,000 and are rapidly approaching the worst numbers of any recent year of influenza deaths. It is not, even for one day of fist-waving, worth risking further spread.

Yes, there’s a legitimate debate to have about when and how to open pieces of the North Carolina economy. We’re certainly believers in the First Amendment and the value of questioning government, including now. But that debate and those questions shouldn’t happen on the public square in Raleigh on Tuesday. It’s dangerous. It’s selfish. It’s a violation of a lawful order. Stay home.

This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 12:27 PM.