California county threatens Gov. Newsom with lawsuit over coronavirus lockdown measures

County officials in a Northern California county are threatening to sue Gov. Gavin Newsom if he doesn't ease his requirements to begin letting municipalities lift lockdown measures amid the coronavirus crisis that has fractured the global economy.

Leaders in Placer County, northeast of Sacramento, said they made their intentions clear in a notice to the governor this week demanding he let them set their own timeline for reopening their local economy.

“If we don’t see any action, we may be calling a special meeting to seek a legal injunction,” Placer County Board Chairman Kirk Uhler said. “I hear stories every day of family businesses that will never come back."

On Thursday, Newsom set the criteria for how counties can lift coronavirus restrictions, which requires meeting a set of benchmarks.

Some include that counties must have no more than one COVID-19 case per 10,000 residents, no deaths for two weeks and 600 daily tests, Politico reported.

Placer County recently opened two new testing sites, but the highest number of results it received in the past two weeks is 199. Uhler called the requirements “completely arbitrary, completely excessive," according to The Sacramento Bee.

“We have a grand total of 10 people in the hospital. We’re not beyond our control, we’re completely within our control,” he told the newspaper.

Newsom's stay-at-home order has forced businesses to close and has kept millions of Californians deemed nonessential from reporting to worksites.

Some businesses have chosen to defy the mandates. Sutter and Yuba counties have allowed restaurants, shopping malls, salons and gyms to reopen while limiting the number of people inside in an effort to maintain social distancing measures.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-county-threatens-newsom-lawsuit-lockdown-measures

CHP can ban protests at California Capitol, federal judge rules

By Sam Stanton May 08, 2020 04:05 PM

A federal judge has rejected a request that he scuttle the California Highway Patrol’s temporary ban on protests at the state Capitol, saying the state’s emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic give it the authority to order a halt to such gatherings.

U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez issued the 24-page order Friday afternoon following two hours of argument a day earlier in federal court in Sacramento during which two Sacramento residents were seeking a temporary restraining order against the CHP’s protest ban.

Mendez cited a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

“The Supreme Court penned those words over a hundred years ago, but they remain relevant today,” Mendez wrote, noting the danger the state’s citizens face from the spread of COVID-19.

“In this case it is uncontroverted that the State’s stay-at-home order bears a real and substantial relation to public health,” the judge wrote. “Here in California, as of May 6, 2020, COVID-19 has infected 58,815 and killed 2,412.”

The plaintiffs — a Sacramento gun club employee and a Republican congressional candidate — had both applied for permits to hold separate rallies at the Capitol that were expected to draw between 500 and 1,000 people.

The CHP denied both applications, citing a ban that was put into place the day after an April 20 protest — which was granted a permit — drew hundreds of people who jammed together on the west grounds of Capitol Park in downtown Sacramento without protective masks or gloves.

Activists protesting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order subsequently began planning additional protests regardless of whether the received a permit. One last Friday ended with a line of CHP officers in riot gear forcing hundreds of demonstrators to back off the Capitol grounds and onto a city sidewalk after a tense standoff. Thirty-two people were detained and cited for creating a public health hazard.

Another demonstration Thursday was thwarted with protesters arriving to find the CHP had ringed the west side of the Capitol property with steel gates and posted hundreds of officers around the perimeter to ensure they could not advance beyond the 10th Street sidewalk. No arrests stemmed from that event.

Mendez has conceded that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit may continue for some time, and has the potential to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But he said in his order that he would not grant a temporary restraining order against the CHP’s ban.

Citing other court rulings, he noted that First Amendment rights are critical and that the state Capitol grounds are a popular spot for citizens to make their opinions known.

“The grounds of the State Capitol building are chief among traditional public fora,” Mendez wrote. “Home to California’s state government, the grounds are ‘especially important locales for communication among the citizenry’ and a place for the citizenry to convey important messages to its lawmakers.”

But he found the CHP is not trying to stop certain protests; instead, the agency is trying to stop all protests to avoid the spread of the virus, a move that he found is within the state’s emergency powers.

“The Court is well aware that the State’s stay at home order being challenged by these Plaintiffs is burdensome, and even devastating, to many,” he wrote. “This pandemic has undoubtedly taken its toll.

“But the sacrifices all California residents are being asked to make to protect the state’s most vulnerable flow from a constitutional executive order. And our willingness to rise to the challenge posed by that order is a true measure of our humanity.”

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article242612886.html#storylink=moresection