Bar Harbor,Maine

JoeH wrote:

The below items is from Bayley's CG, which is participating in the lawsuit

A federal judge upheld the state's 14 day quarantine, which remains in place at least through July

Federal judge upholds Maine's 14 day quarantine

The Maine Attorney General’s Office filed a brief this month on behalf of the state. It emphasized the swell of visitors that come to Maine every summer and said the order does not ban travel into or from the state.

“Maine has a population of just 1.3 million residents,” the state argues. “Last summer there were 22.1 million non-resident visits, with over half of those visits coming from states where infection rates are much higher than in Maine. Recognizing the need to control the virus and protect our residents, Maine’s governor, through a carefully calibrated process and in close consultation with government officials and public health experts, has issued a series of executive orders pursuant to her authority under state law.”

The state’s response also included supporting affidavits from the head of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the governor’s chief legal counsel.

“Moreover, at the time the quarantine requirement was issued, and continuing to this day, nearby states, including Massachusetts and New York, had much higher infection rates than Maine’s,” CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah wrote. “Our concern was that people in those states would travel to Maine and unknowingly infect people here, thus further increasing the spread of the virus and the number of COVID-19 cases in Maine.

“Under that scenario, the capacity of Maine’s existing health care system to provide care for individual patients could potentially be exceeded.”