I read somewhere about a store who didn't sell "essential items", but they tried to begin selling those items and the local police prevented him from pivoting. iirc it was a small AZ town.

So you maybe read about a small town in Arizona? Ok, well I buy my water refills from a small store in the Bay Area that isn’t closed down. Do our anecdotes cancel out?

Unless there's a state-mandated quota on essential businesses, what's stopping a store from adding some essential goods to their inventory and merchandising? This would reduce the burden on other stores, i.e. increasing social distancing in parking lots and within the story.

Laws exist with the consent of the governed. When laws are instituted under premises (e.g models, intelligence) that are later proved wrong (e.g. data, WMD inspections), consent should not be taken for granted.

> Laws exist with the consent of the governed.

This is goalpost moving. Of course laws exist by the consent of the governed. Your original post claimed that there was no law, and that businesses should consider litigating to the Supreme Court, relying on pro bono lawyers who "remember their Constitution", despite the complete lack of Constitutional support for your argument.

No law for house arrest. The "consent of the governed" comment was about state emergency powers.

There's no specific argument to litigate until a specific business opens and gets into a legal dispute with a specific state.

A number of small businesses in my area are offering groceries even though that is not their core business.

If someone could interview them on the operational and regulatory logistics of that change, we could put that on github and build a playbook for other small businesses, sharing strategies across towns & states.

> there are laws which give these powers

IANAL, but I know some of you are so I'm asking here. I've read that challenges to these orders will not succeed because of emergency declarations. The emergency declarations are supposedly backed by some law, correct?

Don't we have a document in the national archives that guarantees things like peaceable assembly and not prohibiting exercise of religion? Yet we have people being arrested or cited for assembling, and pastors being put under arrest for holding church? Is it the temporary nature that allows this to be done?

Regarding the law that allows this kind of stuff, how does that compare to a constitution which says "congress shall make no law ..."?

If you're really interested in the topic, the podcast "All the President's Lawyers" discussed that this week. But in short, you can't read a couple of sentences from the constitution literally and expect that to override a couple hundred years of judicial interpretation.

Regarding the first amendment in particular, one relevant area of law is "time, place, and manner". E.g., just because you have free speech doesn't mean that you can go outside at 3 am with a bullhorn and start ranting; the cops can rightly cite or arrest you. More here: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1023/time-place...

Thank you, this was very helpful. Also glad to see a link to my alma mater.

Freedom of assembly (and to a lesser extent, at least by precise Constitutional language, freedom to exercise religion) have Constitutional protections (that may or may not be unlimited, depending on the justice you're asking). There is no Constitutional protection for running a business or being able to patronize a given business. So protests in public and worship may be protected, but your neighborhood bar is not.

Fortunately for lawyers seeking good test cases, there's a rather long list of businesses which have been shut down. California may have more religions per capita than most places.

State's usually have laws to the tune of "if X happens then the emergency is extra super legit and the governor's orders carry the force of law" where X may or may not include a legislature vote and these laws have been exercised sparingly and in good enough taste (i.e. in actual emergencies) that they haven't been challenged much so they live in the same constitutional gray area that many obvious affronts to the text of the constitution live in.