May 18, 2020 2 min read

When leaders of Washington, Greene, Fayette and Butler counties filed suit in federal court, Pittsburgh, last week against Gov. Tom Wolf and Dr. Rachel Levine, state secretary of health, most of their 25-page filing dealt with statewide orders to shut down businesses deemed non-essential.

In seeking an injunction against Wolf and Levine, they also say the governor “purports to delegate to Levine the authority to determine and employ the most efficient and practical means for the prevention and suppression of disease … includ(ing) isolation, quarantine, and any other control measure needed.”

The legal action also mentions the measure of tracing those whom persons diagnosed with COVID-19 have been in contact.

“The governor apparently intends to exercise suspects’ rights to ‘trace’ or ‘track’ citizens of this Commonwealth by the use of Commonwealth employees and to record and make a record of the whereabouts of Pennsylvanians in violation of their constitutional rights,” according to the suit.

The counties go on to assert that they have a right to protection from arbitrary action of the government: “Substantive due process prevents the government from engaging in conduct that ‘shocks the conscious’ or that interferes with the concept of ordered liberty.”

The counties are also taking on state orders that prohibited candidates from campaigning door-to-door and, on their own behalf, they say they were forced to exclude the public from governmental meetings in the interest of social distancing.

In Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, votes on whether to seek the injunction fell along party lines, with majority Republicans supporting legal action against the governor and secretary of health with minority Democratic commissioners casting votes against.

The case has been assigned to District Judge William S. Stickman IV, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last summer. A court date had not been scheduled as of Tuesday morning, according to the docket entries.