Supreme Court’s Closure Could be First Disease-Related Shuttering in a Century

(What follows was written by Katie Bart and Kalvis Golde. For more of the article, please see link below.) On Thursday, the Supreme Court announced that it would close its doors to the public “until further notice” “[o]ut of concern for the health and safety of the public and Supreme Court employees.” The announcement follows the news earlier on Thursday that the Capitol would close to visitors until April 1, the first disease-related closure of the building to the public since the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918.

In 1918, the Supreme Court still met in the Old Senate Chamber in the Capitol. (The court moved to its current residence at 1 1st Street NE after the building’s completion in 1935.) According to the Senate Historian’s Office, “both the House and Senate galleries had been closed to visitors” due to the Spanish flu by October 7, 1918. The court soon followed suit.

See more of this article at https://www.scotusblog.com/author/katie-bart-and-kalvis-golde/

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