MADISON (WKOW) -- After a year of mask orders and capacity restrictions, The Wisconsin Supreme Court's ruling is a victory for Dane County officials. But, not everyone in the community is celebrating.
On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled local health authorities have the authority to issue temporary rules, like mask mandates and capacity restrictions, without elected officials signing off on them.
"Today's decision was very important, because what it did was upheld public health's ability to do what they've been doing all along, which is using their science based decision making to decide what the best policies to implement are," Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said.
For business owner Laura Komai, this is a protective decision.
"It helped for us to have the expertise of city and county health officials, to help guide us with what was sort of the best practice for our business and for the community," Komai said.
Komai shared that hundreds of people from around the world visit her state street business, Anthology, daily.
"For us, downtown Madison State Street, we have state employees, we have people visiting the Capitol, we have students from the university, we have, you know, classes, middle school classes come in," she said. "What I've always loved about this space is that it has all that mixing, but that means that we sort of have to be mindful about the health levels and the vaccination rates and infection rates for kind of a larger sampling."
Fitchburg business, Gymfinity, was one of the businesses that challenged the ordnance last fall. At the time, they were concerned whether the Public Health Department could make orders and said they were "ineffective" and "unfair."
Now, a company statement reads "the SCOWIS decision does little to affect our business now, nor do I think it was a poor decision. I just hope in the future that our county board enacts orders fair to all businesses, large and small."
Joe Parisi says this decision puts the community in a safer place, though.
"There's a reason that Dane County has one had one of the lowest per capita COVID death rates in the nation. And a big part of that was because of the public health's ability to make science base decisions and implement them when necessary," Executive Parisi said.
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