The Governor can't do that...

 

I know I've talked about this before, but recently Oklahoma got a new EO from the Governor which has many restaurant and bar owners upset, in that it arbitrarily curbs food and alcohol sales between the hours of 11pm-5am.

In my admittedly non-lawyerly opinion, the newly amended Executive Order by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt exceeds its authority (again).

For one, this series of orders claims authority from Article 6, section 2 of the Oklahoma Constitution. This is curious, because Article 6, section 6 is simply the definition of the Governor:

"The Supreme Executive power shall be vested in a Chief Magistrate, who shall be styled "The Governor of the State of Oklahoma."

We have a law already in use: The Catastrophic Health Emergency Powers Act was passed in 2004, and is more or less geared towards organizational and financial responses to a large scale health emergency like bioterrorism, WMD attack, etc. So why aren't the EOs being based in any part of State law? For one, that emergency powers act doesn't cover anything outside of the Governor exercising powers over state agencies, funding the Guard, and so on.

This isn't even a fig leaf of legal cover, and any restaurant that got cited/fined/closed because they broke the Governor's mandate should sue the State.

Somebody "check my math"?


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