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“Use your freedoms wisely and take precautions,� . She was talking about COVID-19. Bailey and members of her family had been exposed to the deadly virus through a “harmless event� she wrote, so they were being tested, and because of quarantine, Bailey would miss at least part of the special session of the Missouri Legislature that had been called by Gov. Mike Parson.

That session, intended mostly to give Parson more spending authority over billions of dollars in federal money intended to battle the coronavirus, just got more interesting. On Thursday morning, Parson expanded his call to the session, asking lawmakers to also pass a law that would limit lawsuits against businesses, nursing homes and nonprofits related to deaths caused by COVID-19.

That’s why a second part of Bailey’s post is so important: “COVID or any other harmful possibility is not a reason to limit our Constitutional freedoms,� she wrote. Here’s the thing about freedom and constitutional rights: Everybody’s for them until they are against them. Take the sort of liability restrictions Parson wants to pass to protect businesses from lawsuits.

Passing such legislation means a freedom tradeoff for the people no longer allowed to file such lawsuits, who will be giving up their Seventh Amendment rights to a trial by jury. Whether or not it’s a good policy — it is undeniable that Parson will be asking the Legislature to limit some people’s constitutional freedoms because of COVID-19, precisely what Bailey said she would not stand for. I hope Bailey tests negative for COVID-19 and is able to return for the debate on that issue. If she does, perhaps she’ll ask her fellow lawmakers a simple question:

Who decides what is a frivolous lawsuit?

That’s the question that gets to the heart of the matter when lawmakers limit the legal avenues that consumers can pursue in order to protect the bottom lines of corporations. The other day, another lawmaker, Rep. Tony Lovasco, R-O’Fallon, and I had a discussion on the social media platform Twitter about that very topic.

I had written something critical of the frivolous lawsuits filed by the Trump Administration in a failing attempt to avoid accepting defeat in the presidential election. Day by day, each of the lawsuits are being dismissed by judges as lacking merit.

The lawsuits don’t need merit, Lovasco argued.

“Trump’s legal challenges don’t need to have a high degree of merit in order for them to be important,� he wrote. “One of the best features of our system is that it can withstand scrutiny from both robust and frivolous vectors. Letting people take their shot helps maintain voter confidence.�

That sounds like an endorsement of frivolous lawsuits, to me, but perhaps only those filed by Republican lawyers who pledge their loyalty to Trump.

Freedom for you, but not for me. In Missouri, if Parson gets his way, the families of the more than 3,000 people who have died of the disease might not be given “their shot� to seek the sort of justice that will maintain confidence in our judicial system.

On the same day the University of Missouri announced that it was moving students back to online learning after Thanksgiving because of rising COVID-19 cases and the need to slow transmission, Parson announced he was heading in a different direction, actually easing guidance on how schools should quarantine students and teachers in the case of a positive test.

Immediately, there was pushback. Spring Schmidt, acting health director of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, sent her own guidance to school districts, explaining that the governor’s suggestions contradict advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Every part of the state is unique, but schools in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County have seen significant transmissions of COVID-19 among teachers and students. Cases and hospitalizations in our region are surging,â€� Schmidt wrote in an email to school districts, which are already fielding phone calls from parents asking about the governor’s new advice. “Now is not the time to weaken our quarantine policies here in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County. Doing so would reduce the effectiveness of one of the most powerful tools we have to prevent spread.â€�

For now, it seems, ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ schools will be using their freedom wisely.