The sheriff couldn’t simply ignore a legal order. He phoned up the chief counsel for the board of supervisors to confirm his belief that a legal order issued by a local public-health officer carried no authority. Santa Barbara’s chief counsel looked into it and, to his surprise, discovered that the sheriff was mistaken. The woman was right: the only person whose authority trumped the health officer’s, in cases involving disease, was the governor of California. And then only if the governor had declared a state of emergency.
