PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal appeals court has dismissed a judge’s ruling that threw out Gov. Tom Wolf’s sweeping COVID-19 restrictions, saying the issue is now moot because statewide mitigation measures have expired and Pennsylvania voters have since constrained a governor’s emergency powers.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that since Wolf’s stay-at-home order, limits on crowd size and business closures are no longer in effect, there is “consequently no relief that this court can grant.”
The Philadelphia-based appeals court also noted that Pennsylvania voters in May approved amendments to the state constitution that give lawmakers much more power over disaster declarations.
The appeals court’s order instructed U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV to vacate his nearly year-old ruling that Wolf’s pandemic restrictions were overreaching and arbitrary and violated citizens’ constitutional rights. The appeals court had previously put the ruling on hold while the Wolf administration appealed.
Stickman, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, had sided with plaintiffs that included hair salons, drive-in movie theaters, a farmer’s market vendor, a horse trainer and several Republican officeholders in their lawsuit against Wolf, a Democrat, and his health secretary.
Writing separately, 3rd Circuit Judge Kent Jordan said that while he agreed with the majority that the case is legally moot, he noted the Wolf administration has said the constitutional amendments do not affect a state health secretary’s disease-prevention authority to issue mask-wearing and stay-at-home orders or shut down schools and nonessential businesses.
At the same time, Wolf administration officials have said they have no intention of restoring such statewide mitigation measures, even as the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus has led to sharply rising infections and hospitalizations.
The state is averaging more than 1,600 new confirmed cases per day, up from more than 600 two weeks ago, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Jordan also stressed the court was not ruling on the merits of the plaintiffs’ case. The decision, he wrote, “should not be read as reflecting a lack of appreciation for the feelings generated by this case, nor as indicating a failure to understand that there are real-world consequences flowing from governmental responses to the unprecedented (at least in our lifetime) pandemic we are yet working our way through.”
In other coronavirus-related developments in Pennsylvania on Wednesday:
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PHILLY IMPOSES MASK, VACCINE MANDATES
New mask mandates will go into effect at midnight Wednesday in Philadelphia, and new city hires will be required to be vaccinated starting Sept. 1, city officials announced.
The restrictions and policy changes come as the city’s count of new COVID-19 cases has risen exponentially over the past six weeks. The city is now reporting nearly 200 cases per day, up from an average in the low 20s in early July.
“I’m upset that people just can’t act in the way they are supposed to act … and do what’s good for everybody,” said a visibly irritated Mayor Jim Kenney, speaking at a news conference. He pleaded for people to “please just get vaccinated.”
Starting at midnight, restaurants and businesses must enforce mask-wearing inside unless they can verify that all employees and patrons are vaccinated, said acting Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole.
The city will also require masks inside city buildings and at outdoor, unseated events of 1,000 or more people. It was unclear if that mandate would impact the huge Made in America festival over Labor Day weekend, but Kenney and Bettigole said people should be prepared to wear masks at such events until cases decline.
Bettigole said cooling centers were instituting a mask mandate even earlier — at noon Wednesday — because of the vulnerable populations that tend to use them.
The city will also require new hires as of Sept. 1 to be fully vaccinated. Existing employees will either be required to be vaccinated or wear two masks — a paper mask underneath a two-ply cloth mask — while working indoors with others.
A day earlier, Wolf announced that some 25,000 employees of Pennsylvania’s prisons and state health care and congregate care facilities have about a month to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or take weekly tests for the virus.
