Mayor doesn’t want legal fight, but he’s confident in strength of KC COVID-19 orders
While he doesn’t want to get into a legal fight, Mayor Quinton Lucas said Tuesday that he’s certain the recently issued health orders aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19 stand on strong legal ground.
“I’m absolutely confident that the public health orders would survive legal challenges,” Lucas said during a media briefing on COVID-19 hosted by the University of Kansas Health System.
“This has been tested repeatedly not just in the law of Missouri, but also throughout the country,” he said. “Last week, number of St. Louis County restaurant owners sued Dr. Sam Page, the county executive in St. Louis County, for their orders that had closed indoor dining. Their TRO, which is a temporary restraining order request, was dismissed by St. Louis County judge.”
Last spring, there were lawsuits in St. Louis County challenging gym and restaurant closings, which were also dismissed, with the county prevailing.
Closer to the Kansas City metro area, the Blue Springs School District sued the Jackson County Health Department from enforcing an order limiting outdoor gatherings. A Jackson County judge denied a request for a temporary restraining order that would have allowed crowds larger than 100 spectators at its high school football games. The district dropped the suit weeks later after Jackson County eased limits on football crowds.
Some area businesses and restaurants have expressed discontent with Kansas City’s recent covid restrictions, which limit the number of people in establishments and place curfews on bars and restaurants. There have been rumblings that the city could see litigation down the line.
“We have every confidence, under the laws of Missouri — I know a little about the laws of Kansas as well — that these orders can be upheld,” Lucas said, adding that we can have reasonable public health orders to make sure that communities can stop things life the spread of infections.
He pointed out health orders issued during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Mask and quarantine orders spawned litigation but many of the cases were dismissed and the jurisdictions prevailed, he said.
“So I’m confident that we will be able to prevail on any of those,” he said. “We don’t want to get into a legal fight. We’ve worked hard to try to work with businesses as much as we can.”
Kansas City has provided more than $3.2 million in small business grants through the Cares Act funds, particularly those in Clay and Jackson County, Lucas said. The city is still working to get funding in Platte County.
“That’s the way way that we’re trying to help businesses, from hospitality to restaurants, and everyone to make sure that they can survive through this pandemic,” he said.
The KC metro added more than 750 COVID-19 cases Monday as hospitals in the region reported record numbers of patients being treated for the virus. The area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas has a total of 75,907 cases and 954 deaths to date.
During the briefing, Lucas outlined the recent health orders in Kansas City. He added that there’s no mayor in America who wants to cut tax revenues.
“There is no glee in issuing orders. There is no desire for any control,” he said. “What we’re really trying to do is simply say these are steps that are necessary to keep our community as safe as possible and we’re trying to be as narrowly tailored as we can in those steps.”
As for the controversial mask mandates, Lucas hinted that he may need to extend the city’s mask mandate.
“People often ask me, ‘How long will these orders be around?’” he said. “And I know I got a lot of hate mail and a few death threats and other things back when we extended our mask mandate back in the summer all the way through January. It appears that not only was that the right decision, but we’ll have to extend longer.”
This story was originally published November 24, 2020 at 12:10 PM.
