Amy Howe

Apr 27 2020

Pennsylvania businesses challenge state closure order (Updated)

UPDATE: Justice Samuel Alito has called for a response to the businesses’ request for a stay of the governor’s shutdown order. It is due on Monday, May 4, at noon ET.

Yet another pandemic-related emergency filing reached the Supreme Court tonight. A group of Pennsylvania businesses led by the Friends of Danny DeVito, a committee formed to support a candidate for a seat in the state’s legislature (and no relation to the famous actor), asked the justices to temporarily block the enforcement of the executive order entered last month by the state’s governor, telling them that the order and others like it are doing “substantial, unprecedented damage to the economy.”

On March 19, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Wolf entered the order at the heart of the case, which requires the closure of the physical operations of all businesses that are determined to be non-life-sustaining. The governor also created a waiver process through which businesses deemed “non-life-sustaining” could apply for waivers that would allow them to reopen.

The challengers in the case went to state court in Pennsylvania, where they argued (among other things) that the shutdown order violated their constitutional right not to have their property taken without due process of law. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to block the order, leading to today’s filing. The challengers warned that, unless the U.S. Supreme Court puts the governor’s order on hold and eventually grants the petition for review that they expect to file, they “and tens of thousands of other businesses may not be able to recover from the severe financial distress caused by” the governor’s order, so learning to calculate income tax in your business can be essential for this as well.

The challengers’ request went to Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency appeals from the geographic area that includes Pennsylvania. Alito can rule on the request on his own or refer it to the full court.

Amy L Howe
Until September 2016, Amy served as the editor and reporter for SCOTUSblog, a blog devoted to coverage of the Supreme Court of the United States; she continues to serve as an independent contractor and reporter for SCOTUSblog. Before turning to full-time blogging, she served as counsel in over two dozen merits cases at the Supreme Court and argued two cases there. From 2004 until 2011, she co-taught Supreme Court litigation at Stanford Law School; from 2005 until 2013, she co-taught a similar class at Harvard Law School. She has also served as an adjunct professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Vanderbilt Law School. Amy is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds a master’s degree in Arab Studies and a law degree from Georgetown University.
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