The Orange County Board of Education (OCBE) has sued Gov. Gavin Newsom in an attempt to end the state of emergency which was recently extended until March 31, 2022.
“This action seeks to restore the checks and balances on which American democracy depends,” wrote attorney Scott J. Street in the Nov. 23 complaint. “Governor Gavin Newsom eliminated those checks and balances during the spring of 2020 when he declared a state of emergency related to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. That may have been necessary at the time, to respond to a virus that caught government officials off-guard. But a state of emergency cannot last forever, especially when the government has used the emergency to exercise vast powers, including an unprecedented 'stay at home' order through which the government told 40 million Californians what they could and could not do for 18 months.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in Orange County Superior Court, alleges that Gov. Newsom’s proved his emergency powers are no longer justified when he admitted publicly and in recent litigation that the early rationale for declaring a state of emergency no longer exists because there is no longer imminent peril as is required by statute, according to a press release.
“The governor has acknowledged that conditions are different now where we have therapeutics, we have a better idea about the virus and we have more immunity with the virus,” said Nada Higuera, an attorney with Tyler & Bursch law firm in Murrieta. “Locally, there have been a lot of cities and counties that have lifted the state of emergency. The state, though, doesn’t want to give that power back. It's really hard for power-hungry elected officials to relinquish power once they have it. I think that's what's going on here.”
The Children’s Health Defense and Children’s Health Defense-California are also named as plaintiffs.
“The Children's Health Defense has a lot of members who are parents and their students are within the system of Orange County,” Higuera told the Southern California Record. “The emergency power suspension is what allows the governor to unilaterally give authority to the California Department of Public Health to require kids to wear masks in schools and vaccine mandates for kids in schools. That’s the connection is that it involves the health of our children and that's what that organization exists to do.”
The OCBE oversees 27 school districts that serve more than 600 schools and some 500,000 students. Plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief under the California Emergency Services Act.
“We don't have a dictator normally,” Higuera added. “We have a legislator and an administrative process for doing things. What’s at stake is restoring that because the governor continues to this day to pass laws and bypass the administrative process. He'll pass a law and then make it effective that day. The public doesn't have a say in it, the public doesn't receive notice, and none of the other governing authorities, such as the Orange County Board of Education, have a say. It's about restoring that checks and balance.”