Earlier this year, Public Health Law Watch, in collaboration with members of the George Consortium and other partner organizations, hosted a series of legal briefings related to COVID-19 and legal and policy issues associated with the global pandemic. Experts and scholars joined us for bi-weekly livestreamed discussions on these issues. We invite you to read the summaries of selected episodes below! And, enjoy relistening to the series (linked below and archived on our #COVIDLawBriefing webpage).
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5/19/2020: The Wisconsin Decision
Mod: Nicolas Terry
Speakers: Wendy Parmet, Scott Burris, Lance Gable
In this #COVIDLawBriefing Professor Parmet, Professor Burris, and Professor Gable are guest speakers on a panel discussing the Wisconsin supreme courts May 13th decision to strike down the stay at home order created by the state’s health secretary. This order included criminal penalties for those who did not comply with this law. The court decided that the order overstepped the powers vested in an “unelected official.” This is especially important as almost immediately photos surfaced of people “crowding bars,” one of the most dangerous COVID-19 hot zones. The precedent of executive emergency powers is generally that the legislature gives the ability to make quick and important decisions to the executive branch in times of emergency. The professors pointed out that during the Spanish flu pandemic Wisconsin was actually one of the first states to shut down. The Wisconsin decision is also surprising as generally the shift in American politics has been towards expanding executive power, this decision standing in noticeable opposition to that precedent.
Professor Parmet pivoted the conversation to the “political context of Wisconsin.” A contentious primary combined with a split between a democratic governor and republican legislature created a moment where partisan politics have even “slipped in during a pandemic.” Professor Parmet was especially concerned with balancing the need for judicial review with the realities of the pandemic. As Parmet put it, we are in a moment where “reasonableness seems so old fashioned.” Although this case has garnered national attention, Parmet conceded that many courts were upholding laws, and perhaps this exception to the rule was not as symptomatic of a broken political system as it felt. The conversation ended with the idea that we have to wait and see the course of the virus to know whether more states will open. If the positive cases continue to pile up it seems extremely unlikely, but if we begin to see a break in positive cases it could be a moment for certain states to slowly open back up.
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Public Health Law Watch’s COVID Law Briefings are co-sponsored by the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law, the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University Beasley School of Law, the Network for Public Health Law, and the APHA Law Section.