MADISON, Wis. — Republican Senate leader Devin LeMahieu has signaled that the Senate could leave it to the courts rather than passing a new joint resolution to overturn Gov. Tony Evers’ latest emergency order. The new public health emergency order and mask mandate order came within an hour of the Assembly passing a joint resolution that overturned the last order, and would have gone into effect on Friday.
““The Legislature has done our part to stop this lawlessness,” LeMahieu said in the statement. Evers has argued that his powers to renew emergency orders beyond the 60-day limit set in state law are lawful because the pandemic has been a changing and evolving emergency.
Republican state senator Steve Nass said that he was immediately starting to draft another joint resolution to override the new order. In a release issued Thursday afternoon before LeMahieu’s statement, Senator Steve Nass of Whitewater says he was also calling on senate leadership to consider filing an emergency lawsuit in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
LeMahieu did not indicate in his statement that legislature leadership would file an emergency lawsuit. The Court could rule on an existing case challenging’ the governor’s authority to issue successive orders at any moment.
Republicans argue Gov. Evers has overstepped his powers by repeatedly extending his original emergency order requiring masks statewide beyond the original 60 days. The State Assembly approved a joint resolution earlier Thursday that would have repealed that emergency order and the corresponding mask mandate effective Friday, once the resolution was signed.
But Evers responded by immediately issuing a new emergency order, basically forcing the Legislature to start the resolution process over again if they wanted to take further action.
Regardless of how the dispute plays out at the state level, local mask requirements will stand. That includes a mask order that has been in place for months in Dane County, and a new order issued Thursday in Rock County.
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