Evan Gonzalez, Detroit Stock City
Heirloom Hospitality Group, which owns the Townhouse restaurants in Detroit and Birmingham, signed onto a lawsuit against MDHHS over its new COVID-19 orders.
The state’s health department did not have the authority to impose restrictions on restaurants to prevent the spread of COVID-19, a split Michigan Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.
In the 2-1 ruling, Judges Mark Boonstra and Michael Gadola said the order by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services was “an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power.”
MDHHS in issuing the order “is extremely broad and is essentially unlimited by restrictive standards.”
“As discussed, when the scope of the authority granted by the legislature is great, the standards placed by the legislature upon the discretion of the delegee must be correspondingly more precise,” the ruling states.
The ruling stems from a complaint filed by Oakland County-based River Crest Catering, which argued MDHHS did not have authority to impose the order.
Judge Christopher Yates dissented, saying the court should have dismissed the case because it’s “as moot as moot can be.”
“The overheated rhetoric in briefs and oral arguments suggests that the remaining COVID-19 disputes on court dockets are sacred causes, rather than mere court cases, and the litigants and attorneys in these disputes seem determined to keep these battles going endlessly,” Yates wrote. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. We judges have the power and, in my view, the duty under the mootness doctrine to dismiss the combatants from the COVID wars and bring down the curtain on this chapter in our history.”
MDHHS plans to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
"Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) used many tools to protect Michiganders from a novel, deadly and fast-moving virus," MDHS spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin said. "One of those tools was the department's epidemic orders, which rested firmly upon authority given by the Legislature to the director of the MDHHS over 100 years ago and reaffirmed by the Legislature just last year. As the trial court correctly recognized, this long-standing law, written to provide critical protection to our state 's public health in times of greatest need, is fully consistent with our state constitution. Furthermore, the COVID public health emergency has ended, and so have all of the department’s epidemic orders; in fact, the specific orders this lawsuit challenges have been gone for over two years now. MDHHS respectfully believes the Court of Appeals majority reached the wrong result in this case and is planning to appeal."
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