The Fourth Judicial Department of New York State has brought back into effect a contentious policy that gives the state government the legal authority to require people to quarantine or isolate themselves involuntarily to stop the spread of very infectious diseases.
Rule 2.13, which significantly increased the State Health Commissioner’s powers, was first passed in February 2022. However, it was overturned in July of the same year by the state Supreme Court because of a lawsuit brought by Republican lawmakers Sen. George Borrello, Assemblyman Chris Tague, and U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, who was a member of the Assembly at the time of the filing.
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The ruling was recently overturned by the Fourth Judicial Department because the Republican challengers, who claimed that Rule 2.13 ignored the state legislature’s jurisdiction and granted the executive branch excessive power, had not shown how their authority had been undermined.
By a unanimous decision, the Democratic Supermajority of the court decided that the “Legislature retains its power to address the regulation,” simply stating that lawmakers in New York still have the right to amend the statutes that gave the governor’s office the first authority to enact new, more stringent public health regulations. Moreover, the state lawmakers who first filed the lawsuit were not authorized to do so by the Fourth Judicial Court, which stated that “the legislator petitioners failed to fulfill the injury-in-fact requirement to establish standing.”
The lower court determined that Rule 2.13 did not deprive the plaintiffs of their rightful power or annul any of their votes, and as a result, the challengers lacked a basis for a direct lawsuit.
“In as much as the legislator petitioners merely asserted an alleged harm to the separation of powers shared by the legislative branch as a whole, they failed to establish that they suffered a direct, personal injury beyond an abstract institutional harm,” the court revealed.
Republicans have pledged to keep contesting the policy and have dismissed the Fourth Judicial Department’s decision as a formality.
“The court seems to insinuate that the only person with the right to sue is someone who has been forcibly locked in their home against their will” The petitioners’ attorney, Bobbie Anne Flower Cox, posted a blog post after the lower court’s ruling.
When the state legislature changed executive legislation in the early stages of the Covid 19 pandemic and granted Governor Andrew Cuomo extensive authority to revoke laws and execute executive decrees, Rule 2.13 was first made available.
The latest decision overturns the judgment of Cattaraugus County Supreme Court Justice Ronald Ploetz, who concluded that Rule 2.13’s establishment of actions as severe as involuntary isolation violates the constitution’s requirement for a separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.
The State Commissioner of Health now can again enforce Rule 2.13, which “whenever appropriate to control the spread of a highly contagious communicable disease, issue and/or direct the local health authority to issue isolation and/or quarantine orders, consistent with due process of law, to all such persons as the State Commissioner of Health shall determine appropriate.”
