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Law360 (June 10, 2020, 8:01 PM EDT ) Republican state legislative leaders asked a Pennsylvania court on Wednesday to order Gov. Tom Wolf to end the COVID-19 disaster emergency declaration that's been in place since March that the lawmakers say has kept businesses needlessly shuttered as new case numbers have dropped.
Senate President Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, and Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, said in a Commonwealth Court complaint that Wolf was illegally refusing to comply with a resolution passed by the General Assembly this week ordering an end to the emergency declaration.
"State law allows for the temporary suspension of civil liberties under dire circumstances," Scarnati said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon. "We allowed the governor that time initially to flatten the curve. The need to suspend civil liberties in the interest of public health and safety has clearly passed."
Wolf issued a disaster emergency declaration in early March as COVID-19 cases first started to appear in Pennsylvania, and later issued an executive order that all non-life-sustaining businesses close their doors in order to ensure social distancing and to curb the spread of the virus.
As the state's Emergency Management Services Code only allows disaster declarations to continue for up to 90 days, the governor issued a new proclamation last week renewing the declaration.
In the meantime, the governor has slowly been lifting restrictions on business operations in different areas of the state as the spread of COVID-19 cases has slowed.
But lawmakers are looking to upend Wolf's disaster declaration in reliance on a separate provision in the Emergency Management Services Code allowing the legislature to order the termination of a state of emergency through adoption of a joint resolution by both chambers of the General Assembly.
After adopting such a resolution on Tuesday, however, the lawsuit said that Wolf had refused to take action to end the declaration.
"Gov. Wolf's failure to issue an executive order or proclamation ending the COVID-19 state of disaster emergency is unlawful, unreasonable, and without just cause," the lawmakers said in their complaint. "Gov. Wolf has no discretion to refuse to issue an executive order or proclamation ending the COVID-19 state of disaster emergency."
Instead, the governor has said that the Pennsylvania Constitution required that the resolution be presented to him for approval.
What's more, the governor said on Wednesday that ending the disaster declaration would do nothing to hasten the reopening of businesses in the state.
He said that restrictions on business operations were enacted not under the disaster declaration, but instead under separate powers granted to the state's Department of Health.
"Ending the disaster declaration would not reopen anything, it just wouldn't," Wolf said at a press event on Wednesday. "Anybody who says differently is wrong."
Scarnati and Corman are represented by Matthew Haverstick of Kleinbard LLC.
Counsel information for the governor's office was not immediately available.
The case is Sen. Joseph Scarnati III et al. v. Tom Wolf, case number 344 MD 2020, before the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.
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