Wisconsin Supreme Court overturns Governor Tony Evers' Coronavirus lockdown order.

Protesters in Madison last April. Chicago Tribune/AP.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned Governor Tony Evers' Coronavirus lockdown order. Chicago Tribune. The 4-3 decision marks the first time a lockdown order has been overturned by a state supreme court. The plaintiffs in the case, the State's GOP leadership, argued successfully that Tony Evers' exceeded his authority after he extended his "safer at home" order to the 26th of May. A six day stay to allow the legislators and Evers to come up with a compromise plan was rejected as well. However, even under Evers' plan Wisconsin meets five of the six criteria for opening up the state.

EDIT: Brown County, where Green Bay is located, has reinstated the order locally. 

My Comment:

As you may know I live in Wisconsin so this is one of those rare stories that I get to cover that actually directly effects my life. Of course, as a critical worker, this actually won't change all that much for me. I'm still going to work every day and that won't change if the state is open or not. Indeed, that won't change if my workplace is closed or not as I have to be there no matter what. 

That being said, I'm of two minds on this. First of all, I think it was pretty clear that Governor Evers was going too far with his lockdown orders. Extending the lockdown all the way to the end of May was a little insane for my tastes. The outbreak in Wisconsin hasn't been very bad and what little there is of the virus is concentrated in our bigger cities. Evers' one size fits all plan was a huge burden placed on the areas outside of Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay that had the most cases. Indeed, there were still a few counties in Wisconsin that had zero cases whatsoever. 

The lockdown seemed to have very little to do with the facts on the ground so I didn't support Evers actions. If he had a plan that was more consistent I might have supported him but he wanted to treat the big cities the same as the small towns and rural areas that have not been effected by the virus. Though Evers plans were not as heavy handed and crazy as our Michigan neighbors I still thought that they exceeded what was necessary. 

I also think that had Evers even attempted to work with the GOP leadership things might have gone better than they did for him. The lockdown was never bipartisan as the GOP controlled legislature was never consulted. They went along with it for awhile but when it became clear that the outbreak wasn't going to be as bad as feared they decided to fight back when Evers' extended the order until the end of May. 

On the other hand, as someone that lives in one of the most effected counties, I do think that there needs to be some form of lockdown here. As of this writing there isn't a plan from either the GOP leadership or the Governor to do much of anything to slow the Coronavirus. It's very unclear what will happen in the next few days and if they will be able to come up with anything. 

I also don't know how much things will change. I think people are still afraid enough of the virus to stay home. Maybe not in the north woods where they haven't had many cases, but in my area, people are still afraid of catching the Coronavirus. I can't imagine that everyone will just flood into restaurants right away. Plus there hasn't been anywhere near enough time for the various businesses to open yet, so I don't know if things will happen before a new plan is put into place. I also want to say for me personally, I wouldn't have a problem going shopping in a newly opened store but I'd be much more wary about going to a restaurant or bar. 

I know that people will be blaming any new Coronavirus cases on this decision but I disagree. I don't think this lockdown was going to last much longer anyways. Indeed, next week the crappy weather we have had all spring is going to go away and we will have summer like temperatures. People are going to want to be out and about and they weren't going to care what Evers did regardless. And I think small businesses were are the verge of rebellion anyways as two months without an income was devastating enough, they couldn't take a third.  

Will we see more cases because of this? I am not sure. My guess is that businesses that open up will follow CDC guidelines and keep doing things that help slow the spread of the disease like limiting customers, using facemasks and sending vulnerable and non-critical workers home. This should help people in a retail environment and I hope that most cubicle farm style workplaces will continue to allow their workers to stay home. If that is the case we should only see a slight uptick in cases. 

I also think that this is going to make a lot of people happy. Wisconsin has been more devastated by the economic fallout of the lockdown than the Coronavirus itself. A couple of months ago Wisconsin's biggest non-political problem was the fact that there weren't enough workers for all the jobs that were available, but now a huge number of people are out of work. At least some of those people will be able to return now and that is a good thing regardless of how the virus turns out.