The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the public health orders that Governor Tony Evers (D-WI) used to repeatedly enact a state-wide mask mandate, without the approval of the legislature, even after his original one had expired.
Evers, a first-term Democratic governor, enacted the first state-wide mask mandate for last summer. Although Evers originally said the mandate would remain in effect until the end of September, he proceeded to unilaterally extend it several more times through new public health orders.
“A governor will surely have little difficultly drafting a new emergency order stating that the challenges or risks are a little different now than they were last month or last week,” reads the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s majority opinion. “So long as the emergency conditions remain, the governor would possess indefinite emergency power under this atextual theory.”
For his part, Evers argued that the nature of the pandemic had changed, which thus allowed for him to enact multiple emergency orders for the COVID-19 threat even after the expiration of the original 60-day period. The state supreme court, however, ruled 4-3 that Evers was not actually legally allowed to enact such extensions under Wisconsin law – READ MORE
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