Judge denies Gov. Wolf's attempt to stop covid restriction ruling - TribLIVE

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A federal judge has denied a request from Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to stay his Sept. 14 ruling that found the state’s pandemic restrictions unconstitutional, possibly paving the way for large gatherings without crowd-size limits pending the outcome of an appeal.

In Tuesday’s order rejecting Wolf’s request to temporarily halt the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge William Stickman IV said that he is not convinced of the Wolf administration’s argument “that irreparable harm will result if a stay is not imposed.”

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro argued that lifting the administration’s mitigation efforts — a stay-at-home order that has since been lifted, closing nonessential businesses for a time and a continued limit on crowd sizes — “will open the floodgates and allow the virus to freely spread.”

Neither the stay-at-home order nor the business shutdown orchestrated by Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine have been in effect for months. An order limiting the size of gatherings to 25 people indoors and 250 people outdoors has remained.

A group of seven business owners, along with a U.S. congressman, three state representatives and the counties of Butler, Fayette, Greene and Washington, filed a complaint against Wolf and Levine, arguing the state’s orders are unconstitutional.

Wolf had requested the stay last week while appealing Stickman’s ruling.

“I think regardless of what a judge rules, regardless of what a General Assembly does or what a governor does, the people of Pennsylvania have shown they don’t want to get this disease and they’re going to do things like wearing a mask, they’re going to do things like practicing social distancing and staying away from crowds,” Wolf said Tuesday.

He acknowledged that 250 is “an arbitrary number.”

“All we do know is that virus really likes it when people get together,” he said, “and the less we do that, the better we’re going to be.”

Wolf said he will push ahead with his appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The court ruling does not affect restrictions put in place by local governments.

Stickman pointed to Wolf’s own move to allow restaurants to increase their indoor dining capacity to 50% beginning Monday, writing that the administration did nothing to show that those situations “are categorically different than others covered by a numeric limitation.”

“Defendants did not adduce any evidence that would explain and justify treating social, cultural, political and other similar gatherings differently from commercial gatherings covered by a percentage of occupancy-based limitation,” he wrote.

He said none of the state’s testimony showed why some types of gatherings should be limited by a hard numeric limit and others by a percentage of occupancy.

“For example,” Stickman wrote, “nobody explained why hundreds may gather indoors to shop (the larger the facility, the more people permitted), dozens may dine in a restaurant (again, the larger the restaurant, the more will be permitted), but no more than 25 may attend an indoor lecture, a speech or a wedding.”

Levine said the court’s ruling doesn’t make large gatherings wise.

“We’re very concerned,” she said. “That’s how the virus spreads. That’s how we see clusters and outbreaks.”

She pointed to South Dakota, where a motorcycle rally that drew a half million people has been linked thousands of covid-19 cases both in and beyond the state, according to NBC News. The outlet reported that one study indicated the rally could have caused more than 200,000 infections. At least one death has been linked to the 10-day rally.

South Dakota’s governor has dismissed the numbers as “made up.”

Levine also noted smaller events in which guidelines aren’t followed, such as a wedding in Maine with more than 60 attendees, most of whom did not wear masks or practice social distancing, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Eight deaths – none of whom attended the wedding – have been linked to the gathering, according to the Associated Press. More than 270 cases of the virus have been traced back to the event.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease and critical care physician, said crowds pose an obvious risk in terms of covid-19 transmission. He said the judge’s ruling seems to have less to do with questioning the risk posed by large gatherings and more about why some limits were hard numbers and others were based on occupancy.

“If you can have capacity based restrictions and not stick it to a specific number, why not apply to other types of gatherings,” he said.

He said the ruling should signal to lawmakers and officials that even though restrictions are in the best interest of the public, they must make sure the metrics and evidence they’re basing restrictions on are clear.

Regardless, he said, people should think about the risks and implications involved with attending large, crowded events. More people and more interactions increase the risk, he said, and at an event where there are thousands of people, it’s highly likely that someone there will have the virus, whether the realize it or not.

One person in the crowd can set off chains of transmissions that could land on vulnerable individuals, said Adalja. It also hampers contact tracing, he said, making it much harder for tracers to find someone’s contacts because they themselves don’t know everyone they’ve been around.

“I think as we move forward, we’re going to have issues with mass gatherings until we have a vaccine,” he said. “Just because there is no limit doesn’t mean you should attend or have these gatherings.”

Megan Guza is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Megan at 412-380-8519, mguza@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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