A county judge has rejected a petition from more than 40 St. Louis-area restaurants and the Missouri Restaurant Association (MRA) requesting a county emergency order that bans indoor dining be lifted.
However, in his Friday evening ruling, St. Louis County Associate Circuit Judge John Lasater allowed their lawsuit challenging St. Louis County’s right to impose COVID-19 emergency pandemic restrictions to proceed.
Under a Nov. 12 emergency order issued by St. Louis County Executive Sam Page and Acting Health Director Emily Douchette, all St. Louis County businesses, including gyms, and places of worship, as of Nov. 17, were reduced to 25 percent occupancy from 50 percent and masks will be required.
Under Page’s order, bars and restaurants are closed to inside patrons, although outside dining and take-out food and cocktails are allowed.
The emergency order went into effect Nov. 14. The lawsuit was filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court on Nov. 15, claiming Page and Douchette overreached their executive authority in unilaterally issuing the emergency order without consulting the St. Louis County Council.
“Defendants view COVID-19 as conferring an unfettered power upon them to regulate private conduct in whatever manner they deem necessary without any procedural, substantive or temporal constraints on their authority,” the suit said.
Lasater struck down the suit’s request for a temporary restraining order to block the ban on indoor dining but did not dismiss it altogether.
“I believe the public interest is best served right now by denying this restraining order,” Lasater said, adding the goal of prohibiting indoor-dining is “to protect the public.”
No date has been set to consider the merits of the suit itself. The MRA, which represents 1,000 Missouri restaurateurs, said it will continue to push the suit.
”The restaurants have not lost the case and no judge has declared that any of the medical director’s unilateral orders should have the force of law. A decision on that issue will happen later,” the MRA said in a news release.
Rep. Nick Schroer, R-O’Fallon, is calling on Gov. Mike Parson to preempt local governments’ capacities to impose “tyrannical” COVID-19 restrictions on already stressed businesses.
In a Thursday letter to the governor, Schroer requested that Parson expand the special session he called to settle budgetary and pandemic liability issues — the special session currently suspended because many staffers and lawmakers are currently diagnosed with the virus — to include such a preemption bill.
“Personal liberty is a central principle found countless times throughout our nation’s founding documents. However, we have witnessed across this nation many government officials ignoring this foundational principle of personal liberty and taking the position they know how to control your life better than you,” Schroer wrote. “I call on the Missouri Legislature to take action now by addressing these county executive mandates which are unconstitutional, unlawful, and wholly un-American.”
Schroer’s request to expand the special session to address preemption in pandemic-related regulations has been seconded by fellow St. Charles County Rep. Tony Lovasco, R-O’Fallon, who in a social media post said the prospective measure is necessary to “protect the people of Missouri from these out of control shutdowns and mandates.”
Parson has steadfastly refused to issue a statewide mask mandate or impose any other state-enforced conditions on Missourians, advocating he says on behalf of local control.
“People on the local level should have a voice through their county commissioners, through their city councilors, through their mayors,” Parson told reporters last week and has said the same thing for months. “I truly believe in local control and will continue to support the decisions they make. What I am opposed of is mandates from this position to the people of this state.”
