CHARLESTON — A federal appellate court judge handed down a ruling shutting down challenges to Gov. Jim Justice's COVID-19 shutdowns.
Circuit Judge Pamela Harris dismissed the case involving Justice, Hinebaugh Enterprises, Eden Family Restaurant, Fulton Fun Factory, the Rejuvenation Center II and two individuals.
"In March of 2020, West Virginia’s governor began to adopt public-safety measures in response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic," Harris wrote. "Six months later, a group of plaintiffs sued, challenging those measures as unconstitutional."
The district court dismissed the case, holding that the amended complaint failed to state a valid constitutional claim and the plaintiffs then appeal that ruling, but Harris wrote on June 2 that the court could not address its merits.
"The Governor has long since terminated each of the challenged executive orders, and there is no reasonable chance they will be reimposed," Harris wrote. "As a result, this case has become moot. We therefore vacate the district court’s judgment and remand with instructions to dismiss the case."
While Justice has not formally terminated the state of emergency in West Virginia, he has not instituted any new pandemic-related restrictions, according to the order.
“We’ve been through a bunch of these cases where we were being sued over our decisions whether to play sports, close bars and restaurants, and on and on,” Justice said during a media briefing. “Well, the final cases were just dismissed last week."
Justice said the decisions he made regarding COVID-19 were the right ones.
“We may be one of the only states in the country to win every single one of these cases,” Justice said. “What does that tell us? It tells us that we made the right decisions time and time again.”
The court vacated the district court's judgment and remanded the case with instructions to dismiss the case as moot.
The governor's office was represented by Benjamin Hogan and Ben Bailey of Bailey & Glasser, and the businesses were represented by Wheeling attorney Paul Harris.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit case number: 21-1079