The Wisconsin legislature, which is led by the GOP, filed an emergency petition with the state’s Supreme Court to temporarily block Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order from being enforced.
On April 16, Evers extended his stay-at-home order through May 26; it closed all K-12 schools for the remainder of the academic year and kept most nonessential businesses closed. Evers’ original stay-at-home order was implemented on March 25. Evers stated that his order had saved between 300 and 1,400 lives, asserting, “Folks, we’ve saved lives together. At the end of the day, my bottom line is keeping people safe and we’re not out of the clear just yet.”
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and other Republicans responded to the extension by arguing that the orders should be less restrictive in more rural areas of the state, but Evers insisted that a “massive” expansion of testing and more contact tracing to make sure another wave of the coronavirus would not occur would be necessary before loosening restrictions.
The Hill reported on Tuesday, “In an emergency petition, the legislature argued that the emergency order goes beyond the executive branch’s statutory powers.”
Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald issued a statement saying, “Wisconsinites are forced to sit by with no voice in the process. Other Midwestern states with more confirmed cases, like Ohio, have set firm dates to begin a phased reopening far earlier than the Evers administration.” The duo called the extension “unprecedented administrative overreach” leaving them no choice but to “ask the Supreme Court to rein in this obvious abuse of power … Wisconsinites deserve certainty, transparency, and a plan to end the constant stream of executive orders that are eroding both the economy and their liberty even as the state is clearly seeing a decline in COVID infections.”
Asking the court for an injunction to issue for a six-day stay of the order, they continued, “Such a stay would fairly accommodate the parties’ mutual interest in preserving the status quo and ensuring no disruption to the state’s efforts to control the spread of COVID-19.”
Evers defeated incumbent Governor Scott Walker in 2018 in a narrow race by roughly 31,000 votes, according to The Associated Press. Evers led Walker 49.6% to 48.4%. That difference barely allowed Evers to escape a recount, as Walker himself had implemented a law in which a candidate could ask for a recount if the margin of victory was less than 1%.
CBS News noted, “Business Insider reports that the threshold is due to a law Walker signed after President Trump was elected. Mr. Trump won Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who received just 1 percent of the vote, demanded and received a recount, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. In response, the state legislature passed a measure mandating that in the future, candidates could only request a recount if they were losing by less than 1 percent.”
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If a candidate in Wisconsin is losing by less than 1 percent, they can ask for a recount — but Walker lost by 1.2 percent.