Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

This is where culture really matters. Almost every jurisdiction in the western world has faced this issue. Governments are issuing orders that, when push comes to shove, might not be 100% legitimate in the eyes of a court. In most countries that hasn&#x27;t mattered. People acknowledge the covid problem and are obeying the &quot;orders&quot; despite them, perhaps, not having legal teeth. This requires trust. Like the current politicians or not, most populations respect their governments and are willing to support emergency measures in the short term. Whether they voted for them or not, they trust that their leaders are not evil.<p>But what about the US? If all government is corrupt, if all taxes are sin, if all leaders <i>on the other side</i> are traitors to the cause, the people will never respect those in charge. The people don&#x27;t obey the &quot;orders&quot; nor follow advice. Then they wrap themselves in the flag and actively work against the measures in the name of freedom. That cultural chicken has now come home to roost.<p>This state supreme court could have delayed. Cases take years to get to state supreme courts. They could easily have pushed this case until after this disease has come and gone. Instead they pushed this through in order to get a quick victory over a governor with whom they disagree politically.

“If a forest fire breaks out, there is no time for debate. Action is needed. The governor could declare an emergency and respond accordingly. But in the case of a pandemic, which lasts month after month, the governor cannot rely on emergency powers indefinitely,” Roggensack wrote for the majority.<p>Refreshing to see some pressure for democracy to resume.

Both sides: courts are supposed to apply the law to the facts. Lawyers guide judges in their arguments, and the court weighs each one, resolving conflicts through tests and precedent.<p>Read the text of the decision before bringing politics into it.<p>IANAL, but browsing the text:<p>- The ruling cites the Wisconsin constitution.<p>- Governors can issue emergency orders (and maybe rules?) effective for 150 days.<p>- There&#x27;s a distinction drawn between orders and rules. It doesn&#x27;t matter if it&#x27;s declared as an order, if it invokes the powers reserved for rules, it&#x27;s a rule.<p>- Some reasons the court found it to be a rule: it applies to a general class (all residents), and defines new crimes (non-compliance)<p>- Criminal penalties can only be invoked for properly-promulgated rules.<p>- Therefore, it&#x27;s a rule, not an order.<p>- Can it be a valid emergency rule? The court cites an example of a forest fire, there&#x27;s no time for deliberation.<p>- The end date is ambiguous and this emergency is long-lived, therefore it could be brought for deliberation like a normal rule.<p>Then there&#x27;s lots of handwringing about &quot;an unelected official imprisoning whoever she sees fit&quot;, which is very handwavey and makes me suspect:<p>- The emergency rulemaking machinery of Wisconsin is vaguely defined, so there&#x27;s not a specific rebuttal.<p>- There might have been some judicial activism here.<p>Ideally, the court would grant a stay on the enforcement of the decision, to give her time to properly promulgate the rule.<p>If the legislature resists, or the court doesn&#x27;t grant the stay, that sucks, the bars and restaurants will open, people will get sick and die. Or maybe the Republicans will turn out correct and everything is fine.<p>It may be a boneheaded decision, but there&#x27;s no legal recourse for bad policy correctly followed.

Color me unsurprised. Politics in Wisconsin is incredibly broken[1] (and purposefully so).<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wpr.org&#x2F;us-supreme-court-ruling-effectively-ends-wisconsin-gerrymandering-challenge" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wpr.org&#x2F;us-supreme-court-ruling-effectively-ends...</a>

The Republicans who brought the lawsuit argue that, in part, continuing the lock down isn&#x27;t appropriate because deaths from covid19 are going down. They don&#x27;t connect the declining deaths to being locked down. You would think they would notice.

The jsonline link moved to:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jsonline.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;news&#x2F;politics&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;13&#x2F;wisconsin-supreme-court-strikes-down-tony-evers-coronavirus-orders&#x2F;5179205002&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jsonline.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;news&#x2F;politics&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;13&#x2F;wisc...</a><p>I emailed the mods address.<p>Another:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;13&#x2F;politics&#x2F;wisconsin-supreme-court-strikes-down-stay-at-home-order&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;13&#x2F;politics&#x2F;wisconsin-supreme-co...</a>

What we should do is one thing. Saying the government can make us do it is something else entirely.

[...] In the majority opinion, Roggensack determined Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm should have issued regulations through a process known as rulemaking, which gives lawmakers veto power over agency policies. [...] GOP lawmakers who brought the lawsuit have said the legal challenge was necessary to get a seat at the table where Evers and state health officials make decisions about how to respond to the outbreak [...]<p>This is a fairly narrow decision, it only says the legislative must be involved into this.<p>Alas it did not address the question I had hoped it would - do sheltering rules violate the Bill of Rights?

What is up with this website? I loaded it on my phone, it requested location permission, which I denied, redirected, requested location again, and then crashed.

There seems to be a deep unawareness on the part of some of these officials that stupid draconian restrictions undermine their credibility and activate the latent &quot;fuck you, buddy&quot; attitude that is a core part of the American psyche.<p>We&#x27;re already seeing just how much enforcement of any of these decrees ultimately relies on the consent of the people to go along with it. Deploying jackboots over closing beaches or not letting people buy seeds at Walmart chews up legitimacy that will be needed as this thing goes on.

&gt; The legislature may have buyer&#x27;s remorse for the breadth of discretion it gave to (the Department of Health Services). But those are the laws it drafted<p>So although every state is different, Wisconsin isn&#x27;t that different and its Supreme Court did not rule on the law and only on feelings.<p>The majority opinion was across the ideological spectrum, the dissenting opinion was across the ideological spectrum as well.<p>4-3 decision<p>One member of the court had just left the court, could have easily been 4-4 or another combination<p>Interesting, Wisconsin

Given that the stay at home order is unlawful and democracy has now been restored, I am sure the court will be open today, all judges present and hearing arguments in front of a packed public gallery. I also look forwards to the republicans who brought the case attending the senate building and sitting for extended hours to sort out this issue.

The way the United States has handled this has been awe inspiring in its incompetence. We had our first identified case on the same day as S. Korea. Our death rate is currently 254 &#x2F; million vs S. Korea&#x27;s rate of 5.<p>Our federal leadership is saying that we should both open up and not open up at the same time. Its encouraging protesters that are protesting for the disobedience of the guidelines that it released. We refused functioning tests from other nations that worked in order to produce our own. This cost valuable time and resulted in a first round of testing that did not work, costing more time.<p>Businesses are shuttered by government edict forcing them to furlough or lay people off. Those people are now forced to sit at home without income or any job prospects while the government that required it continues to get paid and states that no further stimulus or funds to individuals is really needed while stating that the $1,200 some limited subset of people got should last 10 weeks. At the same time this government is actively working to reduce food subsidies and health care options not tied to employment.<p>We have state governments using their national guard to protect their ppe from seizure by the federal government. The federal governments response has been rife with cronyism and self enrichment. State level unemployment has been a massive failure.<p>We now have the federal government stating that citizens are warriors and encouraging us to willingly fight and die with a virus? Scientists whose job it is to provide public information and policy are actively derided. Talking heads are actively calling the number of deaths a hoax and panning a reasonable response.<p>We could have just shut down in the beginning, the government could have use the DPA to mass produce PPE and the existing tests while providing people with at least a minimum UBI. They could have quickly reached a point where we are able to test people each day as they walk into the office if in person work is required. If the test is failed the individual must self isolate for x days and can return to work once they test negative. Federal government guarantees the persons job while they are sick and pays the salary so the employer does not suffer. We could have had this thing fully contained and been back up and running in a couple of months.<p>Instead we appear to have seen the stock market fall, thrown our hands up in the air and cried that it is too hard.<p>Rant over. I am just very frustrated that it appears we may have endured all of this for nothing due to terrible management.

If you are. Curious about the actual hearing that led to this, which I read as more intellectually honeston the part of the jurists than the ruling, slate has a nice summary with extensive quotes.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slate.com&#x2F;news-and-politics&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;wisconsin-supreme-court-lift-covid-restrictions-fox-news.amp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slate.com&#x2F;news-and-politics&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;wisconsin-suprem...</a>

It is shocking to me that someone like this could be appointed to and then elected to a state Supreme Court:<p>Bradley&#x27;s homophobic writings that she wrote in the Marquette University student newspaper in 1992 while an undergraduate stirred controversy during the race.[8][9] She had written letters to the editor and a column for the Marquette Tribune, in which she stated she held no sympathy for AIDS patients because they were &quot;degenerates&quot; who had effectively chosen to kill themselves. She also referred to gays as &quot;queers&quot;.[10][11] She called the plurality of Americans who voted for Clinton &quot;either totally stupid or entirely evil&quot;.[12] She blasted supporters of abortion as murderers, and compared abortion to the Holocaust and slavery.[10] She attacked feminists as &quot;angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family&quot; and defended Camille Paglia, who had written in a 1991 column that &quot;women who get drunk at frat parties are &#x27;fools&#x27; and women who go upstairs with frat brothers are &#x27;idiots&#x27;.&quot;[13] Bradley wrote that Paglia had &quot;legitimately suggested that women play a role in date rape.&quot;[13] Bradley apologized for her student writings in 2016, shortly after they had stirred controversy.[14] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rebecca_Bradley_(judge)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rebecca_Bradley_(judge)</a>

I got one will continue to work from home in Wisconsin and let all of the lab rats head to the bars.

As someone who lives in New York right now, I can tell you that this is a terribly dangerous decision.

I guess we’ll see if the US Constitution is a suicide pact.

&quot;Without legislative review, “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,” the majority wrote. &quot;<p>Sounds like legitimate reasoning for their decision, no?