In a jaw-dropping move on Wednesday, the conservative-dominated Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the entirety of the emergency shutdown order Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ administration ordered to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic.
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Evers’ order imposed restrictions on operations of non-essential businesses, imposed social distancing requirements on those that remained open, as well as asked Wisconsinites to stay at home as much as possible to prevent the spread of the virus. The Republican-controlled state legislature filed suit against the state Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm, as well as other health officials, when Evers’ administration extended it from its original date of April 24 to May 26. They claimed Evers had overstepped his powers and threatened to leave Wisconsin “in shambles.”
Republicans’ victory in the suit throws out virtually the entirety of the state’s playbook for containing the spread of the virus; according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, restaurants, bars, and even massive concert halls will be able to resume normal business, unless local officials intervene with their own restrictions. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has reiterated that the city’s own order remains in effect, including “all provisions on public gatherings, restaurants, and bar operations.”
Of the nearly 1.4 million confirmed cases and over 84,000 confirmed deaths throughout the U.S. listed on the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine tracker, a relatively small portion are in Wisconsin: around 10,900 cases and 420 deaths. However, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb has warned that in some of the dozens of states loosening restrictions despite not meeting federal guidelines to do so, coronavirus cases are again on the uptick. Limited reopenings of bars and nightclubs in South Korean capital Seoul resulted in a spike of new infections, a pattern that has been mirrored in other nations.
The court found that Palm should have issued the order through a painstaking rulemaking process—which would have given the legislature an opening to veto it. Justices wrote in the majority opinion that it did not believe an “unelected official could create law applicable to all people during the course of COVID-19 and subject people to imprisonment when they disobeyed her order.”