From the
UAR-verse
The
Governate of Transylvania has been seeing a concerning spike as CVD-19 cases nearly doubled over the last month, going from 83,568 confirmed cases on June 26 to 166,711 as of July 26 (+99.49%). A lot of the increase has occurred in Transylvania's Boone County, where Daniel Morgan III has resisted calls for a mask mandate. Though the realm's executive, Lord-Governor Stephen Beshear, has enacted an indefinite stay-at-home order since April of this year, a phased reopening had begun late May. With cases surging again, however, the Lord-Governor has once again tightened restrictions. Bars, gyms, and recreational businesses and activities which require extremely close proximity and tend to amass more than 20 people at a single time have once again been forced to close entirely. Restaurants, which had begun letting customers back in at 50% capacity, must cut that back down to 25%.
The Lord-Governors biggest move, however, has been his issuance of a controversial mask mandate. Though wearing a mask has been consistently touted by the health and scientific community as the number one way to control the spread of the virus, the realm has yet to adopt a mandate requiring all to wear one. This isn't because the Lord-Governor has been opposed to the idea - he's been aggressively telling citizens to wear them for months. The issue is a provision in the Transylvania Constitution which prohibits the realm government from issuing decrees mandating citizens of the realm wear (or not wear) articles of clothing, instead granting that power to the county level and even then limiting such mandates to clothing that either: a) is outrageous or obscene; b) explicitly supports domestic terror; or c) can be expected to more likely than not lead to harm to another. Because only county level governments can issue any mandate concerning articles of clothing, Lord-Governor Beshear has hoped that Lord-Counts would do so on their own with significant prodding from the realm. As of July 15, less than half of the Lord-Counts had issued mask mandates within their boundaries, and some, most notably Daniel Morgan III of Boone, have openly voiced opposition to any such measure.
With cases growing at a fast pace and deaths starting to rise as well, the Lord-Governor issued Executive Order 20-0718 on Friday afternoon. Citing the Lord-Governor's constitutional authority to "take emergency measures when danger to public safety or likelihood of irreparable harm" is extremely high, the new executive order officially implements a mask mandate realmwide. Beshear's legal team is prepping an argument along the lines that the mask mandate does not violate the Transylvanian Constitution's provision against realm-wide clothing orders because the mandate is not meant in any way to control public expression, say, by banning shirts with alcohol or of the opposition. The Lord-Governor intends to argue that the provision's three listed exceptions which Lord-Counts can cite to in order to pass such mandates inherently show that what is being protected is the right to express beliefs, statements, support, etc., by way of clothings, and that a mask mandate does not hinder anyone's ability to express themselves through their clothing. The argument, however well intentioned, is unlikely to survive the court challenge to come, but until a realm court issues a restraining order on the new mandate it is legally enforceable.
There are other measures the Lord-Governor can take, such as banning travel out of heavily affected counties altogether, a move he has threatened to use against Boone County. Such a drastic measure, however, sours public opinion and the Lord-Governor has been hesitant on enflaming an already delicate situation. Daniel Morgan III appeared at a press conference the morning of Saturday, July 25, promising to demand court action as soon as Monday morning while going as far as calling Beshear a tyrant.
