From CNN:
Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down state’s stay-at-home order
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned the state’s stay-at-home order, ruling it “unlawful” and “unenforceable” in a high-profile win for the state’s Republican-led Legislature.
In a 4-3 decision Wednesday, the court ruled that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration overstepped its authority when the state Department of Health Services extended the order to May 26.
That’s right CNN, it’s a win for Republicans, not for the good people of Wisconsin who want to work.
The suit was filed specifically against state Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm and other health officials, who made the decision in mid-April to extend the state’s “Safer at Home” emergency order.
But the justices wrote in their decision Wednesday that “an agency cannot confer on itself the power to dictate the lives of law-abiding individuals as comprehensively as the order does without reaching beyond the executive branch’s authority.”
Evers, who had ordered Palm to issue the stay-at-home order in late March, told CNN’s Don Lemon later Wednesday that the court’s ruling “puts our state into chaos.”
The state is already in chaos.
The court’s decision is worth a read. However, this part is perhaps the most important.
We do not conclude that Palm was without any power to
act in the face of this pandemic. However, Palm must follow the
law that is applicable to state-wide emergencies. We further
conclude that Palm’s order confining all people to their homes,
forbidding travel and closing businesses exceeded the statutory
authority of Wis. Stat. § 252.02 upon which Palm claims to rely.
Essentially the court decided that this isn’t Nam, there are rules.
The governor can’t use the emergency rules just give himself the ability to order a lockdown and then enforce criminal penalties. That has to come from the legislature.
One Wisconsin justice set the stage for the Left to ignore this in her dissent:
The majority reaches its conclusion by torturing the plain language of Wis. Stat. § 252.02 (2017-18)1 and completely disregarding the longstanding, broad statutory powers the Legislature itself granted to
the Department of Health Services (DHS) to control COVID-19, a
novel contagion.2 This decision will undoubtedly go down as one
of the most blatant examples of judicial activism in this court’s
history. And it will be Wisconsinites who pay the price.
A majority of this court falls hook, line, and sinker
for the Legislature’s tactic to rewrite a duly enacted statute
through litigation rather than legislation. But legislating a new
policy from the bench exceeds the constitutional role of this
court.
The Left is going to nullify this decision and the precedent it sets by saying it’s partisan judicial activism.
Mark my words, if this decision is repeated in other courts, other governors will ignore it with “the Republicans have hijacked the courts so we won’t comply with them.”