Judge’s ruling leaves case in quantum limbo

By now, most of us are aware that on Monday, District 11 Judge Patrick Heng issued two decisions in the lawsuit filed by Nebraska Appleseed and thirteen McCook residents against Governor Jim Pillen and Nebraska Department of Corrections Director Rob Jeffreys. The suit seeks to halt the transition of McCook’s Work Ethic Camp (WEC) into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility.

In Monday’s ruling, the court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case but also rejected a request for a temporary injunction, allowing the underlying lawsuit to proceed without halting the project.

As of Thursday morning, no new filings have been posted to the case history since the Oct. 27 decision. That leaves us with only the statement from Nebraska Appleseed Legal Director Robert McEwen, who was quoted as saying, “The case will carry forward from here, and we will continue to represent the interests of our clients in halting the activities of the defendants as they relate to the large-scale detainment camp in McCook.”

With no dismissal and no injunction, the situation seems oddly suspended. We don’t suspect that anyone has changed their minds or given up; we just don’t know what’s next.

It’s awkward, but it doesn’t have to be viewed negatively. In fact, it reminds us of a half-remembered lesson from an otherwise forgotten high school physics class. It was the one where we learned that something can be two things at once — until someone finally takes a look. More specifically, it’s a thought experiment used to illustrate the principle of quantum superposition, explaining that a system can exist in multiple states at once until it is observed.

The experiment is known as “Schrödinger’s cat.” It imagines a cat sealed in a box with a mechanism that might kill it. Until the box is opened, quantum mechanics suggests the cat exists in a superposition—simultaneously alive and dead.

Erwin Schrödinger proposed the paradox in 1935 as a way to make sense of quantum theory’s stranger implications — or perhaps to poke gentle fun at them. In the subatomic world, particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously, described by a wave function that represents all possible outcomes. Only when an observation is made does the wave function “collapse,” forcing the system into one definite state.

By sealing the cat, the atom and the poison mechanism inside a box, Schrödinger forced physicists to confront a troubling question: when does possibility become reality? Is it when the atom decays, when the poison is released, or when someone opens the box? The paradox underscores how observation — or in this case, judicial and political action — collapses potential into fact.

Judge Heng’s refusal to grant either dismissal or injunction leaves both sides technically alive. The cat, to borrow from the analogy, remains sealed in its box. Yet the project itself continues to move.

Construction continues and the federal momentum is sustained. The machinery of government, once engaged, rarely reverses course for long. The legal challenge may persist like a shadow — a reminder of local resistance — but it no longer halts the conversion of the facility.

Beneath it all lies a familiar truth: when local will collides with federal intent, the outcome is seldom in doubt. People may argue, petition, or sue, but Washington’s projects tend to roll forward on their own inertia. Courts may slow them, but seldom stop them. What remains is not outrage, but the weary recognition that the levers of power rest somewhere far beyond Norris Avenue or West 5th Street.