Prairie State Wire

A government watchdog group has charted a legal roadmap for Illinois residents and businesses seeking to challenge Gov. J.B Pritzker’s stay-at-home orders, now extended until the end of May.

According to the Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW), the executive branch is vulnerable to legal action because nothing in the law gives the governor authority to order people to quarantine and businesses to close. Only the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has that power, and the department is not following the law that gives it that power, the group argues. 

The department, moreover, knows it has this power exclusive from the governor, according to three notification letters signed by IDPH Director Ngozi Ezike. The letters were obtained by ECW.

Kirk Allen of ECW said businesses and residents should have received these letters from their local health departments. Instead, it appears the letters “have simply sat on the desks of Health Department directors across the state,” Allen wrote in an article posted on the ECW website, Illinois Leaks.

“Please understand the legal process,” Allen added. “Hearing about things on the news or on social media is not an order under our laws.”

ECW also notes that health officials were in error in applying other areas of the law covering the closing of businesses and the quarantining of residents.

The law says that the department “may order a person of group of persons to be quarantined or isolated or may order a place to be closed…”

Allen asked, “Who received an order to close, quarantine, or isolate?”

The law further states that a resident or business owner must give their consent to isolation or shutting down unless they are under a “prior order of a court of competent jurisdiction."

Allen wrote, “If you do not consent to the closure, only the order of a court can close you down or quarantine/isolate you by law.

“The burden to keep businesses closed and people quarantine and isolated is on IDPH and the local health departments, and it is becoming evident they can not meet the legal burden in the vast majority of Illinois.” 

Finally, ECW said that the law requires the department to prove with clear and convincing evidence that a person or business has been exposed to a potentially lethal infectious disease. Absent that proof, the group adds, due process rights under the Constitution are being violated.