Individuals freely taking action provide the best-informed, best-tailored, fastest response to changing conditions, including crises [1]. But in the case of COVID, governments, businesses, schools, and nonprofits are preventing this by imposing harmful [2], tyrannical rules.

One way to resist tyranny is by conscientious objection.

This is what’s done by 2nd Amendment sanctuary counties, which now number 1/3 of all counties [3]. Such counties’ government people independently evaluate the constitutionality of city-, state-, and national-government rules and don’t enforce any rules that the county-government people consider unconstitutional.

Such passive resistance wouldn’t be enough to protect against COVID rules. If a county government passively didn’t enforce the state government’s rules but the state government actively still did impose its rules, then local businesses, schools, and nonprofits would still protect themselves from this remaining force by following the state government’s rules.

Many businesses, schools, and nonprofits also impose tyrannical rules themselves and face no penalties.

A second way to resist tyranny is using laws.

In this case, the balance of the forces acting on businesses, schools, and nonprofits would be reversed, so these organizations would be incentivized to allow freedom.

The key would be to use laws to forcefully penalize each specific tyranny:

• When any rule on face coverings or body-temperature measurements is imposed, typically by a business, school, or nonprofit.
• When any rule on facility closure, capacity utilization, separation between people, frequent cleaning, or evidence of immunity is imposed, typically by a government, school, industry organization, franchiser, or airline.
• When any test used on COVID is banned or restricted [4], or when hydroxychloroquine for COVID is banned or restricted, typically by a government, industry organization, or health system [5].
• When any rule or guideline developed unlawfully by an executive, administrator, or judge is imposed, typically by a business, school, or nonprofit.

Law is the best-proven tool for overpowering tyranny. When freedom has advanced in giant steps, again and again the central organizing principle has been law—Magna Carta documenting liberties, Edward Coke reviving liberties, the Glorious Revolution better-limiting monarchs, the Constitution creating processes for limiting all component parts of governments.

Laws overpowering tyranny start with the Constitution, state constitutions, and county and city charters. More-specific laws would flow directly from this foundation.

When such laws are challenged, principled legal groups stand ready to uphold freedom in courts at every level.

To make the supporting constitutional framework clear, and to set out a first step that governments and nongovernment organizations alike can take towards using law to counter COVID tyranny, a draft declaration is given below.

Such a declaration could be signed by people in any level of any government. People in any level of any government can and should use their constitutional powers to limit other government people; this is the way that our rights are made the most secure [6].

Such declarations could also be signed by people in nongovernment organizations. Nongovernment organizations have the legal power to not follow any government’s unconstitutional rules, and also have the power to not impose their own unconstitutional rules.

It wouldn’t be necessary from the start to overpower the tyranny in Progressive-controlled cities, counties, and states. It would only be necessary to create at least some laboratories of freedom that would produce results that could be seen elsewhere. A flame can spread very quickly once it’s started.

Each person who signed such a declaration would then increase freedom to the full extent he could.

Collectively, these actions would create actively-maintained Constitution-supporting regions in which individuals could more-fully use diagnostic tests, use preventive medicines and supplements, and use therapeutic medicines and supplements.

Every individual who is not at elevated risk of death could then much-more-safely acquire immunity.

When they did, everyone would benefit from the best-possible protection [7] as quickly as possible—throughout Constitution-supporting regions, at least.

In the draft declaration, rules are listed that all work together. Structural provisions are summarized that are key to implementing these rules.

Violations are listed (matching the list given earlier), not exhaustively but as representative examples. Experience with these examples would prepare people well to counter other current violations and to counter future violations.

Finally, remedial actions are outlined, indicating which officers are responsible, what actions are needed to actively use law to overpower tyrannies, and what inaction is needed to also locally disempower unconstitutional statutes and guidance.

The key ingredient that has been missing in the COVID era till now is active resistance using laws.