Across the U.S., state and local officials are trying to balance the competing priorities of protecting their citizens from the coronavirus while keeping the economy running. Add into the mix strong feelings about individual freedom, weak and sometimes contradictory guidance from the federal government, and a highly partisan political atmosphere, and that balancing act suddenly becomes a wrestling match.
Take Georgia for example, where Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is suing the Democratic mayor of Atlanta over its face mask mandate. Kemp filed the lawsuit Thursday, a day after issuing an executive order banning cities from requiring face coverings. President Donald Trump also visited Atlanta on Wednesday, arriving at the airport without a face mask. The circumstance prompted Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who earlier tested positive for the virus but was asymptomatic, to question the timing of the lawsuit.
With case counts rising rapidly in Georgia, more than a dozen cities and counties have defied Kemp and issued local orders requiring masks.
Meanwhile, in Louisiana, Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry issued a legal opinion from quarantine on Wednesday stating Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ order requiring face coverings and limiting bar service and indoor gathering is “likely unconstitutional and unenforceable.” Landry is in quarantine after announcing Tuesday that he tested positive for the virus but had no symptoms.
Yale University law professor David Schleicher says in cases like Georgia’s, where it is the state versus local government, the state almost always wins. The showdown over coronavirus regulations there is just one part of a broader pattern of states overruling cities that is “particularly intense in red states with very blue cities in them” like Georgia.
But where the conflict is between two state entities, like the governor and the legislature or the attorney general, the outcome is not so certain. “Most states give governors emergency powers of extraordinary scope,” he said. “That’s not to say it is absolute.”
In other developments:
- Millions more children in the U.S. learned Friday that they're unlikely to return to classrooms full time in the fall due to the coronavirus pandemic, as officials laid out new details of what lies ahead after summer vacation.
- Joe Biden unveiled a plan to reopen schools in the era of coronavirus, seeking to establish federal safety guidelines that he says will be based on science and not on political pressure for the country to arbitrarily put the pandemic behind it. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's proposal ultimately leaves final decisions up to state and local officials.
- A new plan from Senate Republicans to award businesses, schools, and universities sweeping exemptions from lawsuits arising from inadequate coronavirus safeguards is putting Republicans and Democrats at loggerheads as Congress reconvenes next week to negotiate another relief package.
- A major source of income for roughly 30 million unemployed people is set to end, threatening their ability to meet rent and pay bills and potentially undercutting the fragile economic recovery. In March, Congress approved an extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits as part of its $2 trillion relief package aimed at offsetting the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. That additional payment expires next week unless it gets renewed.
- It's about to get tough to buy lumber or a sump pump without wearing a mask. Rivals Home Depot and Lowe's both announced that they will require customers to wear masks in their stores, joining other major retailers this week that have instituted similar requirements, including Walmart, Target, Kroger, CVS, Kohl's and Best Buy.
- The leading manufacturer of N95 masks in the U.S., 3M, says it has investigated 4,000 reports of fraud, counterfeiting and price gouging in connection with the product and filed 18 lawsuits as a result.
- The 42 venues for next year’s delayed Tokyo Olympics have been secured and the competition schedule will remain almost identical to the one that would have been used this year.
- In nursing homes across the U.S., life is as frozen as when the lockdown began four months ago. Today, as some states tiptoe toward allowing nursing home visits again, most remain walled off.
For more summaries and full reports, select from the articles below.
Retailers requiring face masks
These are the national chains requiring customers to wear masks, face coverings
Updated: These national chains are requiring masks
Starbucks
UpdatedWalmart
UpdatedSam’s Club
UpdatedCostco
UpdatedBest Buy
UpdatedKohl's
UpdatedApple
UpdatedKroger
UpdatedDollar Tree: Revoked
UpdatedTarget
UpdatedCVS
UpdatedPublix Super Markets
UpdatedLowe's
UpdatedHome Depot
UpdatedPetSmart
UpdatedWalgreens
UpdatedAldi
UpdatedMarriott
UpdatedVerizon
UpdatedTrader Joe's
UpdatedPanera Bread
UpdatedGap Inc. (Old Navy, Banana Republic)
UpdatedBed Bath & Beyond
UpdatedMcDonald's
UpdatedChipotle
UpdatedArizona gyms should be allowed to reopen, former state health director says
UpdatedArizona’s former state health director says Governor Doug Ducey is “scientifically wrong” in lumping gyms and fitness centers with bars as places that cannot safely be operated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is no reason to keep these facilities closed any longer if they comply with the standards already proposed by current Health Director Cara Christ, Will Humble said in a document obtained by Capitol Media Services.
In fact, he said, any gym or fitness center that meets those standards actually would pose less of a risk to public health than grocery and other retail stores that now are allowed to operate.
The formal declaration comes as part of a lawsuit by Mountainside Fitness which on Monday hopes to convince Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason that he should overrule the governor’s order that declares gyms and fitness centers cannot currently open, no matter what steps they take.
Hanging in the balance is not just the 18 locations of the locally owned operation.
It could provide a basis to force the governor to give the go-ahead for other gyms and fitness centers around the state to reopen if they also agree to meet the standards — something that Ducey and Christ have so far prevented them from even trying.
Gyms and fitness centers had originally been closed in March, along with various other businesses, in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Two months later Ducey agreed to ease up on those restrictions if gyms met guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that requires “strict physical distancing and sanitation protocols.” Based on that, Mountainside and many other facilities reopened.
At the end of June, however, with a spike in infections, the governor reversed course, closing not just gyms but also bars, movie theaters and water parks.
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But Ducey promised at the time that the health department would develop protocols before July 27 to allow the gyms and fitness centers to reopen.
There is now a draft. But Ducey has since extended the closure order for those facilities for another two weeks, if not longer.
Humble, asked to review those guidelines by Mountainside, said there’s no reason for that.
“Because the proposed guidelines are very specific and more stringent than the standards applied to normal commercial businesses, my opinion is that any fitness center adhering to the proposed guidelines presents an equal or even lower risk of transmission of COVID-19 than, per prior examples, a normal retail establishment or grocery store,” he said. Humble said he was not paid for his opinion.
Attorney Joel Sannes hopes to use that declaration at Monday’s hearing to convince Thomason that there is no legitimate health-related reason to keep his client from serving its customers.
Humble, now executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, sought to underline his point that the gyms and fitness centers should never have been lumped into the governor’s June decision to shutter bars to stop the spread of the virus, saying there are clear distinctions.
“Despite my training and three decades of experience in public health, I am unable to propose a mitigation plan for a nightclub or bar that I could state with any degree of confidence would successfully mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission,” he said. The difference, he said, is the nature of each kind of business.
“It appears impossible to enforce social distancing at a bar or nightclub, where the very purpose, goal, and intention of the customers is to avoid social distancing from other customers,” Humble said.
“The interactions between customers are predictably in close proximity,” he continued. “Chairs are frequently not fixed to the floor or else are not used, noise levels drive conversation participants closer together, and alcohol impairs judgment and invites risk-taking.”
By contrast, Humble said, the goal at a fitness center is exercise and healthy behavior.
“Exercise equipment can be easily spaced out for proper social distancing,” he said. “Fitness center members are not ingesting alcohol and are not inebriated, and therefore can read printed wall signs discussing member hygiene requirements and can use good judgment to comply — or be asked to leave.”
And Humble said people, in general, go to gyms to exercise, not to socialize.
“The governor is scientifically wrong to equate the risk posed by those two groups of businesses,” Humble said, calling any such attempt to compare a bar with a fitness center operating under the proposed guidelines “a false equivalency.”
The following retailers, restaurants and grocers have announced mask mandates at all of their stores nationwide in response to the coronavirus…