On Friday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a stay on a judge’s order to lift the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s no sail order.
This comes less than a week after the appeals court granted the stay on July 17.
The stay was vacated after the appellate court found that CDC did not demonstrate “an entitlement to a stay pending appeal — in essence saying that the CDC failed to prove jurisdiction to impose the no sail order in the first place.
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The CDC put in a request on July 7 for the court to issue a stay after U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday refused to put on hold his June 18 ruling that the CDC overstepped its legal authority in placing cruising restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The initial ruling from Merryday granted the preliminary injunction in a 124-page ruling that was supposed to go in effect on Sunday, July 18, which would have made the CDC’s rules a “recommendation” or “guideline.”
That original ruling will now take effect as the CDC continues with the appeals process.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a news conference Monday he remains confident that Florida will win its legal battle to lift the CDC’s order. DeSantis has argued that the CDC’s no sail order is a case of government overreach.
“It raises a bigger question. Can you just have one agency and the government without Congress ever passing a law — just basically shutting down an industry?” he said. “Maybe you don’t care about the cruise industry, but next time it might be your industry. Next time, it may affect people that you know or people that depend on this for their livelihood. So, I think it raises a lot of important implications.”