Governor Cancels His Embattled Restaurant Shutdown Order

Within hours of a judge's block of Governor Kevin Stitt's demand that all food & drink services close by 11pm, nightly,  the governor's team is retreating from the demand.   Reports of the court proceeding reflect a disastrous dialogue in court testimony.  State agencies, including the Alcoholic Beverage regulators (ABLE), the State Health Dept, and the governor's own legal team and chief operating officer; could not produce any verifiable data to back up their selective restrictions.
  The orders banned diners from going to Whataburger at 11:15pm, but that same person could go to a topless strip club for a topless dancer to sit on a patron's sap while gyrating and caressing.
  The governor's team claimed that Google Analytics was the primary source of data they relied upon. But they failed to produce that hearsay, claiming they lack legal permission from Google to use the published info.
  The state authorities also said that Google Analytics concludes that mask mandates are ineffective in slowing this viral spread. Thus, they rejected Judge Susan Stallings' inquiry about an alternative and broadly applied order, which doesn't single out food & drink venues while ignoring other enterprises.

The Governor's Rationale

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   The governor's team presumes that generally, folks who are dining or drinking at that hour of the night are unlikely to exercise prudent measures to prevent the spread of the virus.  Critics suggest that restaurants and taverns were singled out because they've been conditioned for decades to comply with overbearing county health dept. inspectors who show up every few weeks (or more frequently, to enforce a mountain of various rules throughout the venue. 

   The plaintiffs in the civil suit are still seeking damages for harms done because of the hastily-rolled out rules, which failed to follow statutory protocols for public impact hearings, stated penalties, and statutory authority powers invoked.  To this day, we still don't know which emergency statutes the governor is citing for his actions. It could be;

• An emergency caused by nature or manmade disaster
  
• An emergency cause by riot or insurrection
  
• An emergency caused by a public health threat.
  

One would assume the governor's office would follow the 3rd protocol, but that option gives him the least latitude and the most legislative accountability.  The governor specifically waited until the legislature dissolved their terms in mid November, then acted unilaterally. He claims he can't call a special session for the Health Emergency because the new legislature doesn't have authority to convene until after January 5th, leaving the state with essentially no acting legislature for nearly 2 months. Several state legal experts refute this point and say the governor can certainly call new lawmakers into special session anytine the conditions warrant.

A Shakeup in the governor's office

  Governor Stitt did replace his chief legal counsel when the court proceedings were obviously 'going south'.  The previous chief counsel created documents which made emergency dictates pursuing to "because I'm the chief executive officer", rather than because of factual claims such as 'a natural disaster exists', 'a state of lawless riot exists' , or 'a  dangerous widespread health threat exists'.  Plaintiff's attorney, Frank Urbanic; insists that a specific statute or constitutional emergency must be a fundamental premise in order to claim any emergency authority to dictate new rules outside the normal structure of accountability.

KOTV news has more info on the cancelation.