[PREVIEW] Bobbie Anne Cox: How I Secured A Landmark Victory Suing the Governor of New York

I want to talk to you very badly about the Isolation and Quarantine Procedures Regulation, which you challenged Governor Holcomb on. But the origins of this, if I understand the genesis of this regulation, actually stems back to Cuomo still somehow. Give me a sense of what this is. It's actually kind of shocking to most people that I've ever talked to about this, that such an idea could even be sort of talked about in polite company, so to speak. But lay it out for me here. Yes, you're exactly right. It did start with Cuomo. And actually, it started a little bit before that. So I'll just go back a little bit before. In 2015, there was an Ebola outbreak. Most people probably weren't aware of it because it wasn't something like COVID-19. But as a result of that, there was a New York State Assemblyman, his name was Nick Perry. He was an Assemblyman, a Democrat from Brooklyn. And what he did was he proposed a law starting in 2015, for seven years straight through the end of 2021. And he actually in 2021, he was appointed by Biden to become the ambassador to Jamaica. So he's no longer a New York State Assemblyman. But for seven years, while he was an Assemblyman, he did propose this bill, which was very similar to the regulation that I got struck down. That bill specifically said, in essence, the governor and the Department of Health could pick and choose which New Yorkers they could lock up or lock down in quarantine or isolation, if they thought you had a communicable disease. And so it failed that bill for seven years. In fact, there are if you combine the number of New York State senators and New York State Assembly members, you get a total of 213 members of the New York State Legislature. Not one of them would get behind that bill. It never went to a vote, it never even got out of committee, it was introduced in the Health Committee in the Assembly. And in fact, the the Democrat chairman of that committee made a public statement in 2021. And said, we're not even going to vote on this, because it was people were getting so upset, they had learned about this bill, and they were just so upset about the thought of being forced into isolation or quarantine, with no proof that you were even sick. So it was it was denounced, it was never brought to a vote. And ultimately, Assemblyman Nick Perry withdrew it. So he withdrew it from consideration. So what happens? Well, now in March of 2020, when Cuomo is still the governor, emergency powers are given to him by the New York State Legislature, because of COVID-19, right, this pandemic, we don't know what this is, this is crazy, everybody's so scared. So they voted, they gave him emergency powers, which had never been done before. And what they did was they allowed him to, they called it directives, they allowed him to issue directives. What that really meant was he was allowed to make law. That in and of itself is unconstitutional. The legislative branch can't delegate their lawmaking power to another branch of government. But they did. And for a whole year, Cuomo had this power. And when he got this power in March of 2020, he then passed it on to his Commissioner of Health. And that's when this regulation was made. So they basically took the language from that bill that had failed for seven years, they tweaked it a little bit. And then they made it a regulation. And they said, we have this authority, because look, we got these emergency powers. And the problem was that once Cuomo lost those powers in March of 2021, the power to make that regulation should have also disappeared. But it didn't. And they just kept the Department of Health just kept issuing that same regulation over and over again, every couple of months. And then in August of 2021, Governor Cuomo steps down, Kathy Hochul rises from lieutenant governor to governor, and she has her Department of Health continue to issue this same isolation and quarantine procedures regulation. She was never given an emergency power by the legislature. She didn't have the authority to do that. And that's when I found out about it. And I said, absolutely not. I have to bring a lawsuit. This is totally unconstitutional. Well, then just lay out for me exactly what this regulation says. And now I understand why you describe it as a law masquerading as a regulation. What does it actually allow the government to do? So the isolation and quarantine procedure regulation would allow the Department of Health to choose which New Yorkers they could lock up or lock down. They could have locked you up in your home, or they could have removed you from your home and locked you into a facility of their choosing. There was absolutely no restraint in this regulation. So they could have locked you up for days, for weeks, for months, no restraint. They could have told you where you went, you had no choice. You couldn't just say, Oh, I'll walk down in my home. No, they could remove you from your home if they wanted to. They didn't have to prove that you were sick. They didn't have to prove you were exposed to a communicable disease. No age restrictions. So they could have done this to you, your child, your grandchild, your elderly parent. They could have used law enforcement. So you could have gotten a knock on your door from the local police or the sheriff and I'm sorry, you need to come with us. We have an issue we have here a decree from the Department of Health, you have to go into isolation or quarantine. You couldn't negotiate your way out. And what I mean by that is, there were no provisions in the regulation that you could say, Well, wait a minute, you know, I don't have tuberculosis, or I don't have monkey pox, or I don't have COVID-19. I'll take a test. I'll prove it. No, there was nothing in the regulation that would allow you to try to negotiate your way out of this to challenge. Exactly, exactly. And in fact, when we were having oral arguments in front of the judge, the judge asked the Attorney General's Office, you know, if you take a family, and you put them into isolation in a facility or a hospital, let's say, how do they get out? And, you know, there was a pregnant pause. And then the Attorney General's Office said, Well, you know, I guess they could hire a lawyer and they could sue. That is an absolutely astounding thing that you just told me. This is telling me that this wasn't focused on the people somehow. It was focused on the regulation or the needs of the government or the whim of the government, but not on where I would imagine things should be focused on, the well-being of the person in question. Absolutely. Whether it's the state constitution in New York or the federal constitution, the Constitution says you have to have due process protections built into your laws and your regulations. And in this instance, there were no due process protections. I mean, in the regulation, they said, Oh, in accordance with due process, we can do the following. But there were no actual due process steps or procedures put into that regulation. So in the judge's decision, he actually said this regulation gives lip service to due process. You know, you mentioned it, but you don't actually have any due process built in there. So it was really obvious that this regulation was extremely one sided. It just gave this unbelievable unfettered power to the government. And they gave it to themselves, the Department of Health and the governor. This didn't come from the legislature. In fact, as I explained, we saw for seven years, a very similar bill failed for seven years. Not one New York State legislator would get behind it, even the Democrats. So it's the story of a tyrannical governor and her Department of Health doing something that they want to do, but the people don't want them to do it. And the people's representatives in the New York State Senate and the Assembly don't want them to do it. But they did it anyway. Let's go to this. You were a very successful, from what I saw, real estate lawyer in the New York area. Again, this is something that isn't necessarily your wheelhouse, fighting quarantine camp legislation, or regulation. Yeah, no. So I've been practicing law for 25 years here in New York. And my wheelhouse was real estate. I did, yes, transactional real estate work, but I also did property tax certiorari, which is representing property owners and going up against local government, so towns, cities, villages, and I would sue the local government on behalf of my clients if I thought that their property valuations were too high, and therefore their property taxes were too high. And so I was used to suing the government, but on the local level, for private individuals. And so this was the first time I was suing the governor and the Department of Health over, you know, illegal unconstitutional regulation on behalf of 19 million New Yorkers, right.