Tag Archives: #Kentucky

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Mask mandates in the Bluegrass State They don't seem to have made much difference

The Lexington Herald-Leader does not publish a Saturday edition, but at least subscribers can get some updated content on Saturdays. In a story from Friday, we find out that the Bluegrass State’s COVID-19 vaccination rate isn’t as high as previously reported:

    Data duplication error means Kentucky’s COVID vaccination numbers just went down

    By Alex Acquisto | Friday, October 29, 2021 | 9:31 AM EDT

    A major pharmacy chain unintentionally logged a few hundred thousand COVID-19 vaccinations twice, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Thursday, which means many fewer Kentuckians than previously thought have received their first dose.

    Kroger locations across Kentucky, where vaccines are administered through its pharmacies, reported 431,100 duplicate doses to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s federal vaccine database. Those doses — 252,500 of which are thought to be first doses — will be removed Thursday evening and final numbers will be released Friday.

    “The CDC has confirmed in their system that some COVID vaccination data has been counted twice,” the governor said Thursday in a news conference, adding, “This was not intentional by anyone,” but “What it does to our numbers hurts a little bit.” Three other states have made similar errors, Beshear said, but he declined to say which ones.

There is more at the original, but I will admit to being amused.

Jerry Tipton, one of the newspaper’s sportswriters — and it’s the coverage of University of Kentucky sports which keeps the paper alive — had an article this morning on the mask mandate for entrance into Rupp Arena for UK’s exhibition game against Kentucky Wesleyan.

    As fans waited for players to make a “Blue Carpet” entrance to this year’s Big Blue Madness, a security guard noticed Pamela Buboltz’s mask had slipped off her nose. The guard motioned for her to pull it up.

    Buboltz made eye contact with an onlooker (blush). Her gaze seemed to convey a mix of annoyance and can-you-believe-this? She shook her head from side to side after adjusting her mask.

    “No one is wearing a mask,” she said when the onlooker asked about the exchange. “Look around. I see five people (wearing masks). They don’t work anyway.”

There’s more at the original, and Mr Tipton cited examples which ran the gamut.

I noted, on Twitter, on October 5th:

Both signs are still up, the one on the right “strongly encourag(ing)” fully vaccinated shoppers to wear masks beside the outer doors, and the one with no option other than to wear masks beside the inner doors. This is at the Kroger on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky. And while there looked to be roughly 80% compliance three weeks ago, yesterday it was down to, by my guesstimate, 50%. Even a few of the employees, along with a non-employee vendor, weren’t wearing masks, or had them below their chins, where they were of no use.

I, of course, did not wear a mask, and there was no one from the store entrance either encouraging people to mask up or inquiring about vaccination status.

But this was the most important story:

    Two school districts in counties near Lexington are lifting their mask mandates

    by Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Friday, October 29, 2021 | 1:05 PM EDT

    Two Kentucky school districts in counties adjoining Lexington have announced that they are lifting their mask mandates.

    In Nicholasville, Jessamine Superintendent Matt Moore said that masks in school will be optional starting Wednesday.

    Moore said several factors went into making the decision including county data, student and staff cases and quarantines, the number of vaccinations in the community, and the success of the Test to Stay Program, which allows students who test negative for COVID to stay in class even if they have been exposed.

    “I also communicated that, if the data does not trend in the desired direction, JCS would transition back to requiring masks,” Moore said.

    Beginning Monday, Nov. 8, masks and face coverings will be optional for students, staff, and visitors in Madison County Schools at Richmond.

There’s more at the original.

Thanks to the Kentucky General Assembly overriding Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) veto, the decisions on mask mandates in the public schools are the province of local school boards, and not the state. The Governor lamented that he lacked the authority to issue a mask mandate now, and said that, if he had the authority, he would “immediately implement” an indoor mask mandate. The Governor also said that he hoped businesses would put in place mask mandates themselves. Well, Kroger has the signs up doing just that, but Kentuckians are not complying, and the store is not attempting to enforce the requirement.

But the most important sentence in Mrs Spears article is this:

    In recent weeks, Madison County Schools has seen a significant decline in the number of active cases and quarantine cases among students and staff. That decline is in line with the number of cases in the county, officials said in a statement.

If the Madison County schools, which had a mask mandate since the beginning of school, is seeing a decline in cases “in line with the number of cases in the county,” where there is no mask mandate, doesn’t that say that the mask mandates have made no difference?

On September 1st, Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford was shocked and appalled that UK football games was inviting Mr Delta to a tailgate party:

    Then UK announced its COVID protocols for the football season at Kroger Stadium in an Orwellian orgy of double speak: The rules say if you are not vaccinated, you have to wear a mask at all times, even outside! Pinky promise you’ll abide by our honor system! You do have to wear a mask in indoor spaces. Maybe. If we check. Wouldn’t you like to see a UK usher knock on the door of a luxury box to ask some poobah UK donor enjoying a nice bourbon to pull up their mask?

    I’m not sure how to rank science versus football in the SEC, but it seems that UK could have followed the lead of a peer like Louisiana State University. The Tiger Stadium can seat 103,000 people and they’re asking for vaccination status or negative test results. Yes, there will be lines, but also less likelihood to turn games into superspreader events. Then again, maybe LSU has a slightly more celebrated football history and can afford to turn away a few irate fans.

Except the ‘superspreader’ event Mrs Blackford feared never happened. As this graph from The New York Times shows, the South has the lowest “average daily cases per capita” of any region in the country.

On September 1st, the day Mrs Blackford published her column, Kentucky had a moving seven day daily average of 4,320 new cases per day; on October 29th, that average had dropped to 1,214. That’s a 71.90% drop, with UK football games featuring only a small percentage of fans wearing masks, with the vaccination numbers lower than previously reported, and with Kentuckians mostly ignoring masking mandates and requests.

Yes, while I am vaccinated, I have been mostly ignoring the ‘safety protocols’, and I have criticized them. But I can also get kind of numbers geeky, and this article was about the actual numbers. What the worry warts have been telling us has simply not been the case!

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Kroger and masks Local Kroger didn't require masks during worst of the Δ outbreak, so why now?

This sign was posted beside the outer doors at the Kroger on the Eastern Bypass in Richmond, Kentucky, on October 5, 2021.

We reported, on August 10th, that the Kroger Company KR: (%) had updated its mask policy:

    Our current mask guidance requires unvaccinated associates to wear masks and requests that unvaccinated customers wear masks when in our stores and facilities. In light of the Delta variant and updated CDC recommendations, we strongly encourage all individuals, including those who are vaccinated, to wear a mask when in our stores and facilities. We will continue to abide by all state and local mandates and encourage all Americans to get vaccinated, including our associates.

According to the sign, Kroger had gone from “request(ing)” that unvaccinated customers wear masks to “requiring” unvaccinated visitors to wear masks, while still saying, “Masks strongly encouraged for fully vaccinated individuals.

But there was another sign, on the inner doorway, maybe twenty feet from the outer doors:

    Achtung! Attention! Mask required! To stop the spread of the virus, Kroger requires all customers and associates to wear a mask while in our stores.

    Thank you for shopping with us today.

I chose to obey the outer sign, and, being fully vaccinated, I declined their ‘strong encouragement’ to wear a mask. As a guesstimate, about 20% of the shoppers I saw inside were not wearing masks.

So, why did this particular branch of Kroger put up these signs? New COVID-19 cases have been declining in the Bluegrass State, and, thanks to the Republican-controlled General Assembly, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) cannot impose one. This particular branch hadn’t had any signs like this up for months, including during the worst of the ‘Delta’ variant cases. Perhaps the manager got her hand smacked by the corporate office?

At least the store was not attempting to enforce this stupid requirement. It is their private property, so they can impose any restrictions they wish. But I am a free individual, and if they start enforcing this policy, I am free to take my business elsewhere, and I will.

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Yup, Andy Beshear regrets having to call a special session of the General Assembly! The state representatives and senators did the will of the people who voted for them

I asked yesterday if Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) would regret calling a special session of the General Assembly to deal with his COVID-19 programs now that the state Supreme Court has ruled that the injunctions against the General Assembly’s restrictions on his authority had to be dismissed. The Governor got the extension of his state of emergency order for which he asked, but the mask mandate he wanted, and said he would impose if he could? Not just no, but Hell no!

    KY lawmakers override Beshear’s vetoes and end all statewide mask mandates

    By Jack Brammer and Alex Acquisto | Updated: September 10, 2021 | 12:17 AM EDT

    The Republican-led Kentucky General Assembly soundly rejected Gov. Andy Beshear’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic late Thursday night, overriding his vetoes of two bills that stripped the Democratic governor’s ability to issue statewide mask mandates in schools or anywhere else.

    The action came as lawmakers ended a special session of the General Assembly just before midnight. The session, called by the governor to comply with a Kentucky Supreme Court decision last month that said the legislature must approve the governor’s emergency orders, began Tuesday.

    Both the Senate and House late Thursday overrode Beshear’s vetoes of Senate Bills 1 and 2, which he had issued shortly after the bills were initially approved by lawmakers. Senate Bill 1 would nullify emergency regulations mandating masks at public schools and daycare centers, leaving that decision to local officials and business owners. Senate Bill 2 bans any type of statewide mask mandate until June 2023.

    Beshear has said he needs that authority to fight the coronavirus, which has claimed the lives of more than 7,800 Kentuckians and is leaving hospitals severely strapped for staff and resources.

The Senate overrode SB1 21-6, and SB2 23-5. The House overrode the veto of SB1 69-24 and SB2 69-22. The reason that Republicans have such huge majorities in the General Assembly was the Governor’s mask mandates in 2020, when 100 state House and 19 state Senate seats were up for election.

The bills outlaw statewide mask mandates by the state government, but do not prohibit local school boards or districts from imposing their own mandates within their jurisdictions. Mr Beshear had asked local school boards to impose such policies, but most declined to do so, so he got angry and made it an order.

The Governor rescinded his mask order following the state Supreme Court ruling, but by then had persuaded the state Board of Education to issue such an order lasting through the entire school year. The Governor needed his emergency declaration extended — it would otherwise have expired today — but by calling the special session, he lost the state Board of Education’s mask mandate. Whether the state Board’s order was covered by the Kentucky Supreme Court’s August 10 decision is legally up in the air, but it would at least have lasted longer if it had to be adjudicated; now, it’s history, or at least it will be in five days, to give local Boards of Education time to meet and take their own decisions. It is expected that at least the large districts in Fayette and Jefferson counties will impose their own mask mandates, but smaller districts in more rural counties might not. In the Bluegrass State, local Boards of Education are elected, and the Board members must be responsive to the wishes of the voters.

Parents can, of course, tell their children to wear masks even if the local school district does not.

It’s amusing to see the reader comments on the Lexington Herald-Leader article cited above, all claiming that the General Assembly was gambling with the lives of students, but the facts are plain: the members were doing the will of the voters who elected them.

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Will Andy Beshear regret calling a special session?

As we have previously noted, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) really, really doesn’t like the state legislature, but he didn’t have much choice but to call a special session of the General Assembly. Getting the General Assembly involved is something the Governor very much did not want to do. On July 10, 2020, Mr Beshear stated that he wouldn’t involve the legislature because he believed that they wouldn’t do his bidding.

    Beshear was asked at Friday’s news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

In the Bluegrass State, the legislature’s regular sessions are restricted by the state constitution, to sixty days, the last of which cannot go beyond April 15th in even numbered years, and thirty days, not to run beyond March 30th, in odd numbered years. The Governor, however, can call the legislature into special session, and he has the power to set its agenda during a special session. The General Assembly cannot call itself back into session outside of the constitutional restrictions.

But, with the COVID-19 state of emergency that the Governor declared in March of 2020 set to expire on Friday, September 10th, thanks to the state Supreme Court’s decision on the laws reining in the Governor’s emergency authority, Mr Beshear needed the special session to extend that. The General Assembly voted for an extension of that until January 15th, at which time the legislature will be in its regular session.

However, the Republican-controlled legislature hasn’t been doing much that the Governor wanted. We had previously noted that the Governor had asked school districts to put mask mandates in place, but most districts made them optional. The Governor then got pissed off, and made it an order.

    Bill ditching KY school mask mandate approved by House committee on the second try

    By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Updated September 8, 2021 | 7:15 PM EDT

    It took two attempts, but the House Education Committee on Wednesday passed a bill that would eliminate the state’s mask mandate in K-12 schools and specifies when districts could close to in-person learning.

    The House Education Committee first met at noon Wednesday, when House Bill 1 failed because it only got 11 of the 12 yes votes it needed to win approval in the committee of 22. There were seven no votes and three pass votes.

    Later, a second meeting of the House Education Committee was called for 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. At that meeting, the committee quickly reconsidered and approved the bill. It now moves to the full House of Representatives, and similar legislation remains alive in the Senate. The second vote was 16 yes votes, 2 no votes and no passes. . . . .

    At the second meeting, several lawmakers said they were changing their vote so that the legislation could be heard in the full House. Others said they were afraid if the bill died, schools would miss out on the help the legislation could provide. One provision makes it easier for retired teachers to return to the classroom to ease staff shortages.

There’s more at the original.

The Governor had already said that he would reimpose his despised statewide mask mandate if he could, and when the state Supreme Court ruled that his authority had been limited, he ran an end-around, to get the state Board of Education to issue one, a mandate lasting for the entire school year. I had been noting for awhile that the Governor was looking for an excuse to reimpose the mask mandate, and he admitted it, stating that the high number of COVID-19 cases and hospital staffing shortages would have spurred him to enact a statewide mask mandate for indoor settings.

However, under the proposed bill, local school boards and districts would still have the authority to issue mask mandates for their jurisdictions.

The truth is simple: it was the hated statewide indoor mask mandate which was the primary impetus for voters in the Commonwealth to give Republican legislative candidates such huge majorities in the 2020 elections.

The bill also includes language to allow schools more flexibility on ‘non traditional instruction’, NTI, days. In the regular session last winter, the legislature, fighting the closure of schools and long term use of remote instruction, mandated that no schools could take more than ten NTI days without having to make them up in in-person days. As several districts, at least 38 of them so far, have had to close down due to COVID, those days, normally used for snow days during the winter, would quickly get used up. The legislature is still looking at limits, but with more flexibility for schools who confine NTI to those students or classes which must be quarantined, rather than entire school systems. We do not yet know what the final form will be.

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Andy Beshear hates the state legislature, but he had no choice but to call them in

Most of my articles on Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) are primarily sourced from the Lexington Herald-Leader, but he wrangled an invitation from NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, and came to the attention of The New York Times:

    Kentucky governor says the state’s Covid surge is ‘dire.’

    by Melina Delkic | September 5, 2021

    Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

    Kentucky’s Democratic governor on Sunday described the state’s surge of Covid cases as “dire,” and pointed out that Republican state lawmakers had limited his options to control the record wave of infections there.

    “If I had the ability to do it right now, we would have a masking order when you are in public and indoors,” said Gov. Andy Beshear, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” news program. “We know that’s a proven way to slow the spread of the virus and ultimately help our health care capacity.”

Right: if the Governor had the authority to issue a statewide mask mandate, he would have done so, and that is precisely why the voters of the Commonwealth gave Republican state legislative candidates such a huge margin in last November’s elections, because Mr Beshear had issued a statewide mask mandate last year.

Getting the General Assembly involved is something the Governor very much did not want to do. On July 10, 2020, Mr Beshear stated that he wouldn’t involve the legislature because he believed that they wouldn’t do his bidding.

    Beshear was asked at Friday’s news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

And, as it happens, Kentucky’s legislators are not wearing masks today, as the special session opens:

    Kentucky special session on COVID-19 starts with many lawmakers not wearing masks

    By Jack Brammer | Updated: September 7, 2021 | 5:12 PM EDT

    With most members not wearing masks, a special session of the Kentucky General Assembly started Tuesday morning to deal with the state’s surging COVID-19 pandemic.

    Lawmakers acted quickly on Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s call to extend the COVID-19 state of emergency that has been in place in Kentucky since March 2020 and more time for a state of emergency to deal with August flooding in Nicholas County. House Joint Resolution 1, which extends the states of emergency and many of the governor’s emergency orders, was expected to clear the legislature before the end of the day.

    House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, gaveled his chamber into session at 10:13 a.m. and 94 of the 100 members responded to the roll call and heard the proclamation of the special session. Thirty-four members of the 38-member Senate convened at 12:16 p.m. with most members going without a mask. The two physicians in the Senate — Ralph Alvarado, R-Winchester, and Karen Berg, D-Louisville — wore masks.

    Lawmakers returned to the state Capitol in Frankfort at the call of Beshear, who has presented them with an agenda to fight the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 7,900 lives in Kentucky.

    The Democratic governor made the session call Saturday, two weeks after the Kentucky Supreme Court said his emergency orders dealing with the pandemic needed approval by the Republican-led legislature.

As far as I have heard, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd has not yet lifted his injunctions against the legislation that the state Supreme Court ordered him to do, and the parties to the lawsuit were supposed to appear before the judge today, but I have been unable to find any reports concerning that. Nevertheless, Governor Beshear at least appears to be acting as though those injunctions have been lifted.

The legislature quickly approved the Governor’s request to extend the state of emergency until January 15th, the state House of Representatives voting 92-3 in favor, and the state Senate 32-4, sending it to Mr Beshear for his signature.

By extending the state of emergency until January 15th, when the General Assembly will be in its regular session, the Governor would have the power to issue a statewide mask mandate, lasting for thirty days, but the General Assembly might just deny him that one:

    Bill ditching mask mandates for KY schools and daycare centers gains momentum

    By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Updated: September 7, 2021 | 4:32 PM EDT

    Hours after the Kentucky General Assembly began a special session Tuesday to deal with COVID-19 policies, the Senate Education Committee approved a bill that rejects the Beshear Administration’s emergency regulations requiring universal masking of people age two or older in K-12 schools and daycare centers.

    Senate Bill 1 declares the regulations requiring masks in schools and daycare centers null and void.

    The bill, approved by the committee with a 8-5 vote, now goes to the full Senate. Lawmakers who voted no voiced concerns about lifting the mask mandates at a time when transmission of COVID-19 and resulting hospitalizations are at an all-time high in Kentucky.

    Education Committee Chairman Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, said individual school boards will be free to decide their own policies about masking in schools.

    Wise said the bill would become law as soon as Gov. Andy Beshear signs it or the legislature overrides his veto, given that it is considered emergency legislation.

We had previously noted that the Governor had asked school districts to put mask mandates in place, but most districts made them optional. The Governor then got pissed off, and made it an order.

There’s more at the original, much of it devoted to the legislature’s plans to ease the restrictions on ‘non-traditional instruction,’ meaning those days in which school is conducted remotely. The legislature wants to keep schools from closing down for everybody because some students or staffers test positive for COVID-19.

Those were the two things which rankled the legislators, and Kentuckians in general, the most: the mask mandate and the schools being closed, and those are the two things the General Assembly appears to be most eager to prevent from happening again. Of course, it’s going to take a few days to see how this will play out, and what the legislature passes. But at least a wannabe dictator of a Governor has been reined in by the democratically elected General Assembly and the Kentucky Supreme Court.

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It ain’t just them unedumacated rednecks from eastern Kentucky who oppose #MaskMandates

There are a lot of people in the Bluegrass State who claim that it was only them unedumacated rednecks who are opposed to mask mandates in the public schools. Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) first recommended that local school boards impose masking requirements, but after they declined, with two-thirds voting against them, the Governor decided to make it an order, an order subsequently rescinded when the state Supreme Court sided against him.

But then I saw this in The Philadelphia Inquirer: Continue reading →

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The Kentucky Supreme Court slaps down Governor Andy Beshear But don't get too complacent; it might not be over just yet.

I was surprised, and a bit frustrated, when I heard that the Kentucky Supreme Court finally released its ruling on Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) attempts to have declared invalid several laws passed by the General Assembly, over his vetoes, which restricted his emergency powers. Why frustrated? Because I wanted to write about them earlier, but I had to pick up the family at the airport in Louisville, and I had no computer available to me!

But the ruling? Not frustrated about that at all, save for the inordinate amount of time it took.

    Kentucky Supreme Court: New laws limiting Beshear’s emergency powers are valid

    By Jack Brammer and Karla Ward | August 21, 2021 | 3:43 PM EDT

    Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

    In a momentous legal defeat for Gov. Andy Beshear, the Kentucky Supreme Court in a rare Saturday decision ruled on the Democratic governor’s challenge of Republican-backed laws that limit his authority to enact emergency orders to help control the coronavirus pandemic.

    In a 34-page order, the state’s highest court unanimously said Franklin Circuit Court abused its discretion in blocking the new laws from taking effect and sent the case back to the lower court to dissolve the injunction and hear legal arguments about the constitutionality of each law.

    The challenged legislation was lawfully passed and the governor’s complaint “does not present a substantial legal question that would necessitate staying the effectiveness of the legislation,” the seven-member court ruled.

Which is what I have been saying all along!

    Beshear had sought injunctive relief against the new laws, arguing that the legislation undermined his ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and created a public health crisis that would result in increased disease and death. The governor sued the legislature and Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

    The Supreme Court in a decision written by Justice Laurance B. VanMeter of Lexington largely agreed with Cameron and lawmakers. Cameron argued that the challenged legislation does not prevent Beshear from responding to emergencies and simply requires him to work collaboratively with other officials — including the legislature — in emergencies that last longer than 30 days.

The Governor’s argument was simple: he just had to have the authority he claimed, because COVID-19 was so serious! Work collaboratively with other officials? On July 10, 2020, Mr Beshear stated that he wouldn’t involve the legislature because he believed that they wouldn’t do his bidding.

    Beshear was asked at Friday’s news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

And now he has found out that he isn’t a dictator!

Republican candidates for the General Assembly ran against the Governor’s authoritarian decrees, and the voters of the Commonwealth rewarded the GOP with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, and two more seats, out of 17 up for election, in the state Senate. Republicans hold a 75-25 majority in the House, and 30-8 majority in the Senate. It takes only a ‘constitutional majority,’ more than 50% of the full membership of each chamber, to override a gubernatorial veto, not a 2/3 supermajority, as people are familiar with when it comes to the federal government, but the GOP has more than a 2/3 majority in each chamber.

    A spokeswoman for the governor responded to the decision Saturday afternoon, saying Beshear “has had the courage to make unpopular decisions in order to keep Kentuckians safe — the court has removed much of his ability to do so moving forward.”

    Crystal Staley said in a statement that “the court’s order will dissolve Kentucky’s entire state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic. It either eliminates or puts at risk large amounts of funding, steps we have taken to increase our health care capacity, expanded meals for children and families, measures to fight COVID-19 in long-term care facilities, worker’s compensation for front-line workers who contract COVID-19 as well as the ability to fight price gouging.”

    “It will further prevent the governor from taking additional steps such as a general mask mandate,” she said.

And that, of course, is exactly what Kentucky’s voters were trying to do, what they wanted done, when they gave Republicans such strong majorities in the General Assembly.

Miss Staley continued to say that the Governor is assessing whether calling the legislature into special session — the Governor has the authority to call our part-time legislature into special session, but the legislature itself does not have the authority to call itself back into session — would do any good, whether the General Assembly would give him anything he wants. The Governor’s toady jurist, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd, who always sided with Mr Beshear when he was Attorney General, trying to frustrate then Governor Matt Bevin’s (R-KY) actions, blocked House Joint Resolution 77, in which the legislature authorized extensions of some of the Governor’s executive orders, because HJR 77 assumed that Senate Bill 1, which limited the Governor’s emergency decrees to 30 days without legislative approval for extension, was valid, and Judge Shepherd had stayed that law as well. HJR 77 did not grant approval to extend the hated mask mandate.

The legislature, in fact, indicated a willingness to work with the Governor, but Judge Shepherd didn’t want any of that!

    The most prominent he has in place now is his Aug. 10 executive order requiring almost all teachers, staff and students in K-12 schools, child care and pre-kindergarten programs across Kentucky to wear a mask indoors. It applies for 30 days and leaves open the indefinite possibility for renewal. A U.S. district judge’s ruling Thursday temporarily blocked that order in at least one school district. Beshear has asked that it be dissolved.

    The state Board of Education on Aug. 12 implemented its own emergency regulations requiring a mask mandate for students for most of this school year, and the Department for Public Health did the same for child care facilities. A legislative panel has since found those regulations deficient, but Beshear overrode that decision. One of the new laws might limit those emergency regulations to 30 days.

That order included not just public schools, over which the state Board of Education has some authority, but private schools and private daycare centers.

The state Board of Education claimed that today’s decision has no legal impact on their emergency regulations, which run for 270 days, the entire school year. I had previously speculated that Governor Beshear already knew that he lost his case with the Supremes, and pushed to get those regulations put in place to that his authoritarian decrees would continue despite the loss. The Kentucky School Boards Association urged that interested parties go slow in responding, which means that they don’t want anybody filing lawsuits challenging the KBoE’s emergency regulations.

Of course, the KBoE acted because, after the Governor urged, but did not mandate, that local school boards institute mask mandates, some local boards chose against such mandates, so the Governor, who had asked for cooperation decided that he was just going to make it an order.

However, this is not a complete victory. The state Supreme Court remanded the decision back to Judge Shepherd[1]Cameron v Beshear, 2021-SC-0107-I (2021), page 2., with an order to dissolve the injunctions, but that does not in any way prevent the Governor’s toady from finding for Mr Beshear again.

This part is important:

    Another rule of interpretation is that we “‘presum[e] that the challenged statutes were enacted by the legislature in accordance with constitutional requirements.’” Acree, 615 S.W.3d at 805 (quoting Cornelison v. Commonwealth, 52 S.W.3d 570, 572 (Ky. 2001)). “A constitutional infringement must be ‘clear, complete and unmistakable’ in order to render the statute unconstitutional.” Caneyville Volunteer Fire Dep’t v. Green’s Motorcycle Salvage, Inc., 286 S.W.3d 790, 806 (Ky. 2009) (quoting Ky. Indus. Util. Customers, Inc. v. Ky. Utils. Co., 983 S.W.2d 493, 499 (Ky. 1998)). Considering that the General Assembly is the policy-making body for the Commonwealth, not the Governor or the courts, equitable considerations support enforcing a legislative body’s policy choices. In fact, non-enforcement of a duly-enacted statute constitutes irreparable harm to the public and the government.[2]Cameron v Beshear, 2021-SC-0107-I (2021), pages 16-17.

The Court affirmed that it is the General Assembly which makes the laws, not the Governor.

But here’s the kicker:

    These items noted, we do not believe this issue has been adequately addressed by the parties and therefore make no definitive pronouncement concerning the constitutionality of thirty-day limitation contained within the 2021 legislation. . . . .[3]Cameron v Beshear, 2021-SC-0107-I (2021), page 22.

    In sum, considering that the challenged legislation was lawfully passed, the Governor’s Complaint does not present a substantial legal question that would necessitate staying the effectiveness of the legislation. And as the equities clearly favor implementation of the legislation pending an adjudication of its constitutionality, we conclude that the Franklin Circuit Court abused its discretion in finding otherwise. Thus, we remand this case to the Franklin Circuit Court with instructions to dissolve the injunction. This case is reversed and remanded to the Franklin Circuit Court for further proceedings consistent with this Opinion. In the event certain sections of the 2021 legislation may be ultimately found invalid, the likely remedy may be severability.[4]Cameron v Beshear, 2021-SC-0107-I (2021), page 27.

If, upon hearing the arguments at trial, Judge Shepherd decides that the 30 day limit in Senate Bill 1 is unconstitutional, it could, once again, empower the Governor to issue draconian decrees. We waited half a year for the state Supreme Court to rule that Judge Shepherd’s injunctions were improper, half a year in which the authority of the General Assembly in passing the laws was violated, half a year in which some of our constitutional rights were violated. The Court made clear that the Governor’s authority is not implicit, but is defined by the state legislature, so it would be a high bar that the Governor would have to clear to argue successfully that Senate Bill 1 is unconstitutional, but, with a sycophant judge like Mr Shepherd, anything is possible.

References

References
↑1 Cameron v Beshear, 2021-SC-0107-I (2021), page 2.
↑2 Cameron v Beshear, 2021-SC-0107-I (2021), pages 16-17.
↑3 Cameron v Beshear, 2021-SC-0107-I (2021), page 22.
↑4 Cameron v Beshear, 2021-SC-0107-I (2021), page 27.
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What is taking so long?

As we have frequently noted, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) has been trying to run out the clock with his ’emergency’ decrees under KRS 39A. The Kentucky state Supreme Court, on April 16th, decided to hold a hearing on the disagreement between courts in Franklin and Scott counties over the Governor’s executive orders, and then set June 10th, a date then eight weeks into the future, for a hearing.

On May 6th, Governor Beshear announced that he would loosen the restrictions, but not eliminate them entirely, effective just before the Memorial Day weekend. Then, on May 14th, the Governor announced that almost all restrictions would be lifted on Kentuckians, including the hated mask mandate, even for those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. He had, the previous day, followed the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendations, and stated that “fully vaccinated” Kentuckians could dispense with face masks. We noted, on June 11th, on that court finally heard those arguments.

Several lawsuits were filed in state courts last year to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the  Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.

The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders. The General Assembly, dominated by Republicans, passed several bills, over the Governor’s veto, to limit his ’emergency’ powers. Republicans ran against the Governor’s authoritarian dictates in 2020, and the voters rewarded the GOP with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, and two additional seats in the state Senate. Clearly, the voters in the Commonwealth disagreed with the Governor’s actions.

Well, if you thought that the eight weeks the Justices delayed in issuing their ruling in 2020, you ain’t seen anything yet, because eight weeks since the oral arguments this year elapsed on Thursday, August 5th. That was six days ago, but there has still been no ruling issued. As we noted on Tuesday, several school districts decided against going along with Mr Beshear’s request that they impose mask mandates, so the Governor waxed wroth and issued an order that all public and private schools must be fully masked.

    Some KY Republicans call for defiance of K-12 mask mandate and question its legality

    By Alex Acquisto | August 11, 2021 | 1:36 PM EDT

    Less than a day after Gov. Andy Beshear signed an executive order mandating universal masking in all child care, pre-Kindergarten and K-12 settings, some state Republicans are bucking at the new rule, calling it an overreach.

    “Local school districts across the state have carefully considered mandatory face coverings and made decisions regarding their own policies,” House Speaker David Osborne said in a statement Monday morning. “The governor may not agree with their choices, but he must respect their authority. Instead, at the eleventh hour, he chose to politicize this issue and flout their decisions by issuing an executive order with extremely questionable legal standing.”

    The General Assembly “spoke clearly and indisputably” during its 2020 regular legislative session, Osborne said, when lawmakers passed a series of bills limiting the governor’s power to enact emergency measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, including Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 1.

There’s more at the original. But one thing is clear: if the state Supreme Court had done its job and issued its rulings on the previous cases expeditiously, there would be far less of a legal problem with the Governor’s executive orders.

If Senate Bill 1 is judged constitutional, the Governor could still have issued his executive order, in exactly the form he did, but would require the consent of the state legislature to extend it beyond thirty days. The Governor’s own order states that “This Order is effective at 4 p.p. on August 10, 2021, for a period of thirty days, and is subject to renewal.” The only difference would be that the General Assembly would have to approve any extension.

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Andy Beshear orders face masks in all state office buildings

I have been saying, for a while now, that Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) would eventually reissue his odious mask mandate. He hasn’t yet, but he’s moving closer to it: