liability covid-19 governmental-liability government-officers official-immunity
Wrongful death suits against government officials
<p>Can state governors be held liable in wrongful death suits where the deaths are proven to be a direct result of violating all known medical advice and scientific assessment? </p>

<p>I remember that anti-science does have the legal precedent of parents praying for their child instead of seeking medical treatment. 
<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/12/most-states-allow-religious-exemptions-from-child-abuse-and-neglect-laws/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/12/most-states-allow-religious-exemptions-from-child-abuse-and-neglect-laws/</a></p>

<h1>Currently, 19 states and territories have no religious exemptions to civil child abuse and neglect statutes.</h1>

<p>What about criminal negligence for not even bothering to assess the risk by 
doing stratified random testing of 1500 people in the five largest cities of a state? </p>

<h1>If any deaths result in the Brian Kemp's plan to open up Georgia (when everyone says this is a bad idea) can federal criminal charges be brought against him for depriving these people of their civil rights?</h1>

<p>No. </p>

<p>A governor could not be held liable in a lawsuit on those grounds. Governors in every U.S. state have governmental immunity from liability in tort (and a lawsuit for wrongful death is a kind of tort lawsuit) for their official actions, and there is no U.S. state in which this kind of lawsuit would fall within an exception to that governmental immunity.</p>

<p>There is not private cause of action against a state government executive branch official under federal law for a violation of "Trump administration official guidelines for reducing the covid-19 mitigation." Indeed, it isn't clear that a federal statute creating such a private cause of action that purported to pierce a state law official's governmental immunity from liability, even if it were enacted, would be constitutional.</p>

<p>In contrast, if a corporation violated such a guideline, the violation of the guideline would be evidence of negligence, although probably not conclusive evidence, in a suit for wrongful death by a non-employee brought against the corporation.</p>
