© Kalahari Resorts
, a state judge concluded today,
ruling in favor of a company that sought to reopen a water park without suffering criminal penalties. "This unbridled and unfettered consolidation of authority in one unelected official is dangerous grounds to tread on,"
writes Erie County Court of Common Pleas Judge Roger Binette, referring to Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton's orders requiring "nonessential" businesses to close.
"If one unelected, unaccountable to the public official is allowed to invoke unfettered Orders [that] criminalize an otherwise non-criminal activity only for disobedience to her Orders, then the right to Due Process is extinguished."
Binette's
temporary restraining order allowing Kalahari Resorts & Conventions to immediately reopen its
water park in Sandusky is another legal blow against Acton's business closure order, which
Lake County Court of Common Pleas Judge Eugene Lucci deemed "arbitrary, unreasonable, and oppressive" in a decision last month involving gyms. While Lucci's ruling focused on statutory interpretation, Binette concluded that Acton — who
resigned from her job as head of the health department yesterday but continues to advise Gov. Mike DeWine on health issues — exercised unconstitutionally broad powers by purporting to make the operation of certain heretofore legal businesses a crime.
In issuing her orders, Acton relied on a
statute that charges her department with "supervision of all matters relating to the preservation of the life and health of the people" and gives it "ultimate authority in matters of quarantine and isolation." She interpreted that to mean she had "the authority to make special orders for preventing the spread of contagious or infectious disease."
Comment: See also: