PA Health Secretary Couldn't Mandate Masks In New GOP Proposal

HARRISBURG, PA — Following the General Assembly's failed attempted last month to legislatively restrict the Pennsylvania health secretary's powers, Republican lawmakers want to give voters across the state the power to do so.

Rep. Ryan Warner has notified colleagues he will introduce a House resolution identical to a bill recently approved in the Senate seeking to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to limit the health secretary's powers.

If the constitution is amended, the health secretary would be prohibited from many actions that were taken during the height of the coronavirus outbreak. Those restrictions include ordering an entity to close, as well as barring anyone who has not been exposed to a contagious disease to physically distance from others, wear a universal face covering, shelter in place, quarantine from other people or restrict travel.

"Between March 2020 and June 2021, (state residents) were subjected to the unilateral orders of an unelected bureaucrat that infringed on their rights and shuttered their businesses," Warner, of Fayette County in western Pennsylvania, stated in a recent memo to colleagues.

"Those orders were given the same gravitas of law but were not subject to the checks and balances of the co-equal branches of our government. It flies in the face of democracy that one unelected
individual would have the autonomous ability to enforce their will on 13 million people."

If the impending measure is approved, voters across the state will decide whether to adopt the proposed amendment, possibly as early as the November general election.

The constitutional amendment tactic worked as recently as the May primary, when voters approved increasing the power of legislators to regulate the length of disaster emergency declarations. The General Assembly used that new power last month to end Gov. Tom Wolf's 15-month coronavirus disaster emergency declaration.

Wolf last month vetoed legislation passed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate that would have implemented essentially the same restrictions on the health secretary's authority that would be in the proposed constitutional amendment.

"This bill prohibits basic public health measures, which are necessary to curb infectious disease transmission and save lives," Wolf said at the time.

"Specifically, the bill eliminates the Department of Health's ability to take disease control measures for any future contagious disease, resulting in the inability to contain the spread of infectious diseases in the commonwealth or long after the current pandemic is over."

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