Whopping $52 million jury award is justice for misdeeds of Bundy and his friends | Opinion

An Ada County Jury has decided how Ammon Bundy, Diego Rodriguez and associated companies should be held accountable.

On Monday evening, the jury returned a judgment of over $52 million in combined compensatory and punitive damages in the defamation suit launched by St. Luke’s Health System.

This decision is a just one.

Bundy and Rodriguez accused St. Luke’s of child trafficking, a detestable lie in response to doctors’ efforts to save a malnourished child. They brought armed protesters to the hospital, necessitating a lockdown and putting patients at further risk of harm.

Those are serious damages to St. Luke’s, and it is due compensation.

But more importantly, this judgment could do what federal law enforcement has failed to: Put an end to Bundy’s string of lawless acts, his repeated acts using force to get his way.

He took up arms against the government when his father refused to pay the grazing fees he owed. He took up arms again because he was upset with the sentences received by two Oregon ranchers who set fires on federal lands. Federal prosecutors mishandled both cases, and Idaho was left to deal with the consequences.

During the pandemic, he forced public meetings to shut down and was at the head of a mob that broke a door at the state Capitol.

All of these acts undermined the rule of law, and they encouraged others to follow his lead. Others on the far-right rallied behind him, with the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s campaign arm choosing to endorse Bundy’s gubernatorial campaign.

Bundy will find it much harder to organize such actions as he deals with his almost certain bankruptcy.

The most difficult road may lie ahead: enforcing these penalties on Bundy, Rodriguez and their allies. Bundy, in particular, has already successfully defied an arrest warrant for months by holing up with followers at his home in Emmett. Police have been right to wait that situation out — learning the lessons of Waco, Ruby Ridge and other standoffs — but eventually, the law will have to be enforced.

Bundy doesn’t get to threaten his way out of it, as he has so often done in the past.

The rule of law means you face the consequences of your actions, no matter who you are.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community member Mary Rohlfing.