A group in Pennsylvania is suing the mayor of Philadelphia and Health Commission-related individuals due to their recent actions to reinstate COVID mandates.
ABC News reported last Monday on the city of Philidelphia’s actions to reinstate COVID mandates:
Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate on Monday after reporting a sharp increase in coronavirus infections, with the city’s top health official saying she wanted to forestall a potential new wave driven by an omicron subvariant.
Confirmed COVID-19 cases have risen more than 50% in 10 days, the threshold at which the city’s guidelines call for people to wear masks indoors, said Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, the health commissioner. Health officials believe the recent spike is being driven by the highly transmissible BA.2 subvariant of omicron, which has spread rapidly throughout Europe and Asia, and has become dominant in the U.S. in recent weeks.
In the filing the group of individuals from the city shares the following:
In a breathtaking Declaration, Dr. Cheryl Bettigole (the “Commissioner”) of the City of Philadelphia’s (“Philadelphia”) Department of Public Health (“PDPH”), usurped the power and authority of the General Assembly, Pennsylvania Department of Health, and the State Advisory
Health Board (“Acting Secretary”).Specifically, the Commissioner publicly stated, “[i]n contrast to the metrics we [the PDPH] use, the CDC metrics are designed to be applicable throughout the country…” (emphasis added). As if that declaration weren’t enough, the Commissioner then went on to say, “[a]s the poorest big city in America, Philadelphia has a high rate of chronic conditions that are linked to poverty and, as a result, we have designed our metrics to be cautious.” Capping these incredible statements, the Commissioner then concluded that “[t]he current metrics are not set in stone; if we do not see a rise in hospitalizations with this rise in cases, we will revisit our metrics and make changes where indicated.”
Not only are the “current metrics” “not set in stone,” they are not set in Pennsylvania law and violate the statutory and regulatory scheme set forth in Pennsylvania for the Department of Health, including the State Advisory Health Board.
On April 18, 2022, Philadelphia businesses will once again be under Respondents’ self-invented authoritarian control. See e.g. Const. Art. 1, § 26, PA CONST Art. 1, § 26 (“[n]either the Commonwealth nor [the City of Philadelphia] shall deny to any person the enjoyment of any civil right, nor discriminate against any person in the exercise of any civil right”). Philadelphia’s authoritarian regime consists of: the Commissioner, Mayor James Kenney (the “Mayor”), and the PDPH. The authoritarian regime’s latest example of government overreach is overtly on display in the Commissioner’s April 14, 2022, “Emergency Order Temporarily Reinstating Masking Requirements in Certain Circumstances to Prevent the Spread of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19),” (hereinafter the “Emergency Order”).
The justification for this latest exercise of unfettered government action is based partially upon an indefinite suspension of Section 8-407 of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter in the Mayor’s “Declaration of Extraordinary Circumstance: Suspending the Formal Regulatory Process for Regulations Concerning a Novel Coronavirus,” (hereinafter the “Emergency Declaration”) signed by the Mayor on March 11, 2020 – over two (2) years ago.
Amazingly, the Emergency Declaration is still in effect and apparently has no end date.
The indefiniteness of the Emergency Declaration is problematic in its own right; however, equally problematic is the continued promulgation of local municipal health agencies, like the PDPH, reliance upon the Disease Prevention and Control Law of 1955, 35 P.S. § 521.1, et seq., for the proposition that it allows them to institute mandatory masking requirements. That is simply not so. The General Assembly places unequivocal limitations on Philadelphia, notwithstanding its Home Rule Charter status, pursuant to the Disease Prevention and Control Law and “Limitations on municipal powers.”
Read the entire filing below:
PA Philly Covid Mandate Petition for Review Filed by Jim Hoft on Scribd
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