There are easy answers. Health care workers are essential, right? But what about health care workers like a chiropractor or dental hygienist? Truck drivers are essential as they bring food across a hungry nation, but some trucks carry china tea cups. And then there are the bunny toenail problems. Yes, I’m not making this up.
A rabbit-rescue shelter is hosting a nail-trimming event for bunnies. Is that really essential?
Ms. Alvarado hates having to decide whether rabbit lovers can gather to trim bunny nails. (She said maybe.) She hates having to rule on whether people can play tennis or take flying lessons. (She said no, and no.) She can’t believe how many hours she has spent tangling with a local BMW dealer over the question of whether test drives are legal right now. (She has held firm on no.)
Angela Alvarado is a sex crimes prosecutor in Santa Clara County who has been pressed into service to decide what is, and what is not, “essential.”
“At first, it was like, ‘Oh, this is cool, this is exciting,’ ” she said. “Now I’m like, this is heart-wrenching. Like I’m — I’m over it.”
Decision making can be hard and isn’t always fun. Go figure.
She said she has reached the point where it is a relief when complaints come in with too little information for her to take any action. “I don’t feel comfortable being in that position of saying, ‘You know, your constitutional rights don’t really matter right now,’ but I’ve had to,’’ she said.
“Right now we’re putting parts of the Constitution on hold. We really are. Freedom of assembly. Right to practice religion.”
Do the people of Santa Clara County realize their constitutional rights are at the whim of Ms. Alvarado?
It is a remarkable acknowledgment from a woman who has spent 21 years upholding the law in Santa Clara County. But the law, she said, seemed so much clearer when her work mostly involved prosecuting sex offenders. “This isn’t prosecuting a bad guy,” she said. “This is prosecuting a place I get my coffee. It’s not fun choices to make here.”
Whether her 21 years as a prosecutor are aptly characterized as “upholding the law” is a question for another day. Today, the Constitution is left in the hands of an assistant with a computer and phone who, essentially, gets to make it up as she goes along.
Far trickier, she said, was a confrontation on Easter Sunday with Southridge Church of San Jose. The church’s pastor, Micaiah Irmler, came up with the idea of inviting parishioners to celebrate in the safety of their cars at a local drive-in movie theater.
When Ms. Alvarado nixed that plan, the congregation instead arranged to distribute 500 bags of food and other items like toilet paper and homemade masks to parishioners who showed up at the drive-in. The idea was to exploit the exemption for those who provide essential services like food delivery. The fact that parishioners might hear Pastor Irmler deliver an Easter sermon over a loudspeaker was incidental. Or so the members of Southridge Church hoped.
Did they beat the system? Should they? Who gets to decide? Why, that would be Alvarado.
Ms. Alvarado wasn’t having it. She instructed the police to put an end to Pastor Irmler’s sermon to a sea of parked cars.
And if you don’t adhere to her decision as to what’s essential, what constitutional rights transcend the decision to suspend the Constitution, the bludgeon comes down. All because Alvarado has made her “heart-wrenching” decision as to what rights are essential.
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