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Court to Wisconsin Governor: You Can’t Force People to Stay Home Indefinitely

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4-3 opinion, says Gov. Tony Evers’ emergency powers don’t allow him to extend stay-at-home orders indefinitely, handing a victory to the Republican legislators who sued. Several counties — Milwaukee, Dane, Madison — immediately announced they’d do their own lockdown extensions.

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21 replies on “Court to Wisconsin Governor: You Can’t Force People to Stay Home Indefinitely”

The gov made his decision based on the decision of the lady who heads up the Department of Heath in the state and the court pointed out that one person does not have toe power/authority to make that decision. After they lifted the restriction 3 counties (left leaning) chose to remain locked down based on her sending out a vague notice that allowed for reinstating the lock down. The legal
staff in those counties pointed out to the counties that it was illegal to continue the lowdown and they immediately opened up.
The relationship between the Gov and the legislators is strained as he found out when he took office and attempted to initiate stringent gun control laws.
He called for an immediate legislative session which they called to order and immediately adjourned.LIVING HERE IS FUN.

IT should be noted that immediately after the court made its ruling the taverns in the state began to do a great business.Not days but hours after the ruling.
Only in Wisconsin.

All models are wrong! The reason is that a model is NOT the thing modeled and thus CANNOT behave as the thing modeled.

So called “experts” created the model and pushed the results of their models. Their results were not just wrong, they were catastrophically high by orders of magnitude. So much so that they were not even in this universe. Why then do we listen to the experts?

They did not use “the science” then and are not using “the science” now. They are only using what they call “the science”. As if changing the name of a thing changes the thing named. Which it does not and cannot do. What is, is: no matter what you call it or try to define it out of existence.

Actually all they are doing is simply licking the butts of the politicians who give them our money to help them commit the largest scam ever perpetrated on the United States. Science, as in the scientific method, has nothing to do with it even as they use words that appear otherwise. They and the politicians do not have our best interests at heart. Not even close!

Kinda makes you wonder about how the Global Warming scare is going to pan out, seeing’s how it’s also based on models!

Echoing Michael and Kathleen, we did dodge a bit of a bullet and the ruling could have gone the other way.

I am greatly saddened that the leaders of the state have so little faith in their fellow citizens (the attendees at a few bars notwithstanding) but I realized earlier today that lefties have been claiming a wild, wild west would descend on us were a concealed carry “permission” to pass with blood running in the streets that their position hasn’t changed a whit (with apologies to any Whit’s).

I was struck by the tone of Eeeever’s comments I happened to hear yesterday. A whining “They are not listening to me. They are not doing what I say” bawling of a child followed by a schoolmarm scold of a few people over exuberantly getting out of their house who could have been chided humorously instead of scolded by children (when it was the child doing the scolding).

I think Evers’ claims of the justices being convinced falls under the idea of “I operate according to your principles when I am weak for that benefits me, and according to my principles when strong for that is to my advantage.” The Gov seems to have the usual leftist idea that anyone that disagrees with him is stupid and needs to be corrected (if possibly useful later) or evil and the enemy (the legislature which opposes him and “led the innocent judges down the dark path”).

I’d agree with Scott (but IANAL) the Gov could get the legislature to extend his order, because that would change it from a administrative rule into a legislative action.

Milwaukee and its County, Madison, (the capital) in Dane County, and Kenosha county are the prime hot spots, with Brown County (where the City of Green Bay is and the Packers play) has a number of people that worked at meat packing plants get sick ~300 in a week as a rare spike/blip. Something like 60-65% of the infections and deaths were in MKE and Kenosha county, iirc. Of our 72 counties, I think 15 never had a case and 25 or so never had a death.

The Gov certainly could have said Good Job! but instead whined, cried and scolded. Maybe his jackboots were too tight and starting to chafe.

Sorry for this long post, but I thought it might be helpful to understand this decision in a bit more detail. First, this decision could have easily gone the other way. One of the judges who voted to invalidate the order was voted out a month ago. His term does not expire until August so he was able to participate in this decision. As someone already noted, a recently elected and otherwise thought to be conservative leaning judge voted to uphold the order. That judge authored a 53 page dissent which says, among other things, “the judiciary must never cast aside our laws or the constitution itself in the name of liberty.” Draw your own conclusions from that statement.

To clarify a bit, the order reversed was not the governor’s original stay at home order. That order was to expire April 26. That order was not before the court. The state’s secretary of health issued a separate order which, in essence, extended the safer at home restrictions as well as setting out criminal penalties for violations of the order. The court found the secretary’s order was, in fact, an administrative rule. And in Wisconsin administrative rules can only be implemented by drafting, public comments, legislative input, and possibly public hearings. None of that happened and therefore the order was never legally promulgated. Summarizing the situation the court said, “Rulemaking exists precisely to ensure that kind of controlling, subjective judgment asserted by one unelected official, Palm, is not imposed in Wisconsin.”

The court also found the restrictions in the rule went well beyond the secretary’s defined powers to combat infectious disease. The court was also very critical of the rule’s criminal penalties. The offending conduct was not specifically defined, and deciding what was a crime was left to the unfettered discretion of the secretary. As the state’s attorney told the court during oral argument,
Court: . . . [T]he Secretary can identify behavior that is not otherwise criminal and . . . she can all by herself sit down at her computer keyboard, write up a description of behavior and make it criminal, correct?
. . . .
State’s counsel: Yes. The scope of available enforcement is determined by the order. Yes. . . . That’s true.

Whether this decision will make a difference in other states is hard to say. Each state has its own administrative law and constitution, and each state’s orders are different. This was a rebuke of an agency rule, not a governor’s order. Governors typically have emergency powers–in Wisconsin the governor’s emergency orders are generally capped at 60 days. Administrative bodies also have emergency powers–but those emergency powers may also have time limits.

There is a lot more that could be said about this decision and its concurring and dissenting judges. In particular some of the concurring judges saw the rule as violating separation of powers. If this order has broader impact it might come from this constitutional dimension rather than the administrative aspect.

But for Wisconsin, at least, the state is now open.

I will probably do a member’s blog post this weekend with some fuller numbers, but the truth is this is a NYC area problem with some other significant areas in other big cities. BTW-I am a Bronx native and grew up in Westchester. This has affected family and friends for me so I don’t say that lightly.

NYC Metro Statistical Area is 19 Million (6% of the country) and they have had 28000+ deaths as of this past Wednesday, or 147/100K poulation. This includes those areas of NJ/PA/CT that have large commuter traffic to NYC.

The entirety of the USA has had 84575 deaths which is 26.4 / 100K or 5xs less.
If you take the NYC Stat area out of the equation, the rest of the USA is 18.8 deaths / 100K population.
NYC Statistical area is 1/3 of all deaths in the USA, in 6% of the population.

The Commonwealth of VA is at 10.9 deaths / 100K: 14 x’s less than NYC
My little area of SW Virginia is at 0.75 / 100k: 20 x’s less than NYC.

Even Seattle which was the original hot spot, 23.2 per 100K.

Oh, and we have furloughed hospital staff because there is nothing for them to do. We never approached ICU capacity.

We “opened” sort of today.

Thank you, Scott, for highlighting the fact that not all Wisconsinites are free of the governor’s edict. I live in Rock County WI which is adjacent to Dane County. Immediately after the ruling came down from the WI Supreme Court, we received word that per our unelected county health officer we WILL be continuing under the Governor’s (btw, it is pronounced eevers 🙂 stay-at-home plan. My question is this: if the governor exceeded his power, what gives this local administrator the power to keep us locked down? As to the comment by the gentleman below, the WI Supreme Court is currently 5-2 conservative. One of the “conservative” judges voted against this ruling.

Well, I’m not sure “gentleman” is an appropriate moniker, but I’ll take it. Oh … you were talking about the other guy? 😉

As to your situation in Rock County, WI … it’s past time to for the general populace to tell these tyrants exactly where they can stuff their edicts and exercise civil disobedience en masse.

Our situation in New Mexico is not much better with with our twit governor making similar edicts and extensions. These loons deserve no respect or consideration, and I personally dare them to arrest me going about my own business as I see fit.

The math in my home state of Missouri puts the % of deaths at .00009% of Missouri’s population. To put it in context: visually imagine the new Busch stadium at full capacity for a baseball game that lasts 24/7 for five months. .00009% is 4 people. Just Do It!* (*subject to government permission).

Bill is right. It’s not about the virus anymore, it’s not about safety. It is purely about the ability of politicians to hijack a scenario in order to justify revoking Constitutionally Sacred liberties, and limiting the People’s exposure to this liability.

It is strikingly absurd that the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling was split 4 to 3. The 3 dissenters obviously believe in the promotion of tyranny, and they need to be recalled.

That was my thought. How could the other three not make it unanimous.

In over half of the counties they haven’t even had a single case, much less a death so their mortality rate is 0%

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