The lines are being drawn.
The city council of Oroville, California, has near-unanimously voted to declare the community a “Constitutional Republic City” in order to protect its citizens against what it deems unconstitutional state and federal mandates.
“What we are doing is protecting our citizens’ rights as much as we can on the local level,” Oroville Vice Mayor Scott Thomson said to Fox News Digital.
“In a way, we are acting as a sanctuary city for our citizens and their rights and freedoms protected by the U.S. and state constitutions,” Thomson added. “Gavin Newsom modeled this type of declaration for us when he declared San Francisco a sanctuary city for what he believed to be overreach by the federal government against his citizens.”
The measure, requested by Thomson, was approved by the city council by a 6-1 margin earlier this month. The resolution allows Oroville to opt out of enforcing “any executive orders issued by the state of California or by the United States federal government that are overreaching or clearly violate our constitutionally protected rights.”
Although the Biden White House’s employee vaccine mandate looms large on the minds of many Americans, Thomson stated that the city’s move isn’t tied to a single mandate. Rather, the Vice Mayor told ABC7, it’s a response to “the large amount of mandates that are affecting every aspect of our lives and our kids’ lives.”
The text of the resolution affirms that the city believes “in the separation of powers, individual rights, and the rule of law outlined in the United States Constitution, including the freedom for local government to have local control over issues related to the citizens who reside within the City’s jurisdictional boundaries.”
“It’s about local government taking care of its citizens period and that what we’re doing,” said Councilor Dave Pittman, per the East Bay Times.
Thomson further told Fox News that the city will handle each mandate differently and that the city would take a majority vote to determine its handling of the potential legal fight or any given issue.
“Each and every mandate will be handled differently. Although we realize this virus is serious; we also believe that protecting the constitutional freedoms our citizens have is also something we take seriously. Our state representatives have been trying to get through to our governor for him to hear that just because something works well for big cities like Sacramento or San Francisco does not mean that the same thing holds true for rural areas like Oroville,” Thomson said.
Oroville lies in Northern California, approximately 70 miles north of Sacramento.
“It’s just basically drawing the line. It’s not necessarily against one specific mandate, we’re not talking about one mandate that’s been pushing on us recently. It’s a barrage of mandates,” Thomson contended, while Councilmember Art Hartley called the resolution a “political statement” with “absolutely no teeth.”
Mayor Chuck Reynolds, meanwhile, said the resolution was passed to “reaffirm to people what type of government we live under.”
“With all of these emergencies and leaders declaring emergencies it puts one person in charge and they can do pretty much what they want even when the emergency is no longer an immediate threat, they are reluctant to give up that power,” Reynolds explained.
California last month become the first state in the county to enact a public-school student vaccine mandate, a decision that has sparked enormous backlash from parents. Over 1,000 people gathered outside the State Capitol in Sacramento last month to protest against the announcement from Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom.
“The American culture and way of life is being challenged at its very core and perverted by radicalized politicians who have forgotten that, as a republic, the power belongs to the people,” Thomson said in comments of the resolution.
As proponents of the Oroville measure pointed out, Democrats have a long history of ignoring the federal policies they disagree with, as in the case of immigration with the creation of sanctuary cities.
Conservatives have begun to take a page out of their book. Not only have localities such as Oroville begun to fight back on the issue of vaccine mandates; in places such as Texas, states are creating “sanctuaries” for the unborn by passing abortion policies that seek to skirt around Roe v. Wade.
