Courts now closed to most of the public

WEST CHESTER » Following the course charted by courts across Pennsylvania, Chester County President Judge John Hall has greatly restricted public access to courthouses in the county to attempt to reduce the risk of spreading infection of the novel coronavirus.

In an order signed Thursday, which took the place of multiple past administrative orders regarding which proceedings would remain ongoing and which would be delayed because of the outbreak, Judge Hall said that the vast majority of people who normally would come to the main county Justice Center in West Chester and the county’s 17 local Magisterial District Courts would be kept from entering from now until Monday, April 13.

Hall gave no indication what would happen after that date. Estimates on how long the practice of “social distancing” — which is driving the shutdown of courts, businesses and schools across the United States — will be necessary to halt the virus spread are varied and multiple. Some say it could last as long as 90 days — beyond Memorial Day. The state’s shutdown of all but “life-sustaining” businesses is effective “until further notice.”

Hall had resisted taking the drastic action until now despite being pressed to curtail a number of court functions by some court officials, but relented after the state Supreme Court ordered a shutdown of trial, lower, and appellate courts.

In his order, Hall declared that the courts will be closed to the general public for non-essential functions. The essential functions include emergency petitions for bail, temporary protection from abuse orders, emergency child custody petitions, emergency guardian proceedings, and other emergency matters, including guilty pleas for sentences that would allow the immediate parole of a defendant, so-called “timeserved” pleas.

Hall also gave the county Sheriff’s Office the authority to deny entry into the Justice Center any person who appeared to be sick, or had a temperature above normal. He allowed those pre-trial hearings of proceedings that could be conducted via video conferencing to proceed, but ordered all criminal and civil jury and non-jury trials continued until next month.

He also stated that there could be no court-ordered evictions from any residential rental property through April 13.

Work processing cases at both the Common Pleas and Magisterial District Court levels will continue, but with little or no outside public contact. Police will still be permitted to have those arrested for criminal offenses arraigned at District Courts, but those proceedings could be handled electronically in many cases.

Meanwhile, Chester County Health Department statistic continue to show that the number of residents with presumed positive infections from COVID-19 exposure at 18, with 216 negative tests and no deaths. Most county offices remain open, but with severely reduced staff.

Across the state, the coronavirus death toll rose by two over the weekend, including a 72-year-old Abington man who became the state’ third victim on Sunday. On Saturday lawyers for Gov. Tom Wolf asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging his authority to shutter “non-life-sustaining” businesses, declaring that unprecedented action is needed to combat a global pandemic they called “perhaps the biggest catastrophe of our lifetimes.”

The Allegheny County Health Department confirmed Saturday’s death and described the person as an adult in the late 60s who had been hospitalized.

More than 370 coronavirus cases and two deaths have been reported in Pennsylvania. Health Secretary Rachel Levine said the state is seeing a spike in cases because more people are getting infected, not because testing has expanded. She also revealed Saturday that Wolf’s administration is considering a “shelter in place” order to ensure people stay at home.

Wolf has already discouraged people from going out, if they can avoid it, and ordered schools shut through March, at least.

In a legal filing late Friday, the state attorney general’s office said Wolf is empowered by the state’s Emergency Management Services Code to shutter businesses and to restrict people’s movements in a disaster.

“COVID-19 presents an extraordinary challenge that requires extraordinary measures to combat. The governor was empowered by law to combat precisely this challenge,” the filing said.

The state Supreme Court did not immediately rule on a lawsuit challenging Wolf’s authority to shut down gun shops and other companies. A second lawsuit, filed by a Harrisburg-area law firm, was withdrawn Saturday, one day after the Wolf administration relaxed its blanket closure of law offices.

Wolf has justified his edict that tens of thousands of businesses shutter their doors indefinitely by citing big, daily upticks in the number of COVID-19 cases that health officials say threaten to overwhelm hospitals and spike the death toll.

Under pressure from Republicans and business owners, Wolf agreed to delay enforcement of the shutdown order until Monday. His administration also agreed to exempt additional businesses from the shutdown, including the timber industry, coal mines, hotels, accountants and laundromats.

A gun shop claimed in a lawsuit that Wolf’s edict violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms and other constitutional rights.

Wolf’s lawyers said that nothing in his order prevents a citizen from owning a gun.

“Petitioners’ argument that the global COVID-19 pandemic is somehow not a disaster demonstrates a dangerous level of myopathy about the effect this pandemic could have on the citizens of the commonwealth and our health care system if the spread of this disease is not arrested,” the attorney general’s office wrote.

Wolf’s administration has steadfastly refused to confirm to The Associated Press whether gun shops are covered by his shutdown order. Its legal filing said the governor’s office used industry codes generated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to construct its list of businesses covered by the shutdown order.

“Any business would already know which sector it occupies and its corresponding NAICS code,” the filing said.

On Saturday, Joshua Prince, a lawyer challenging the governor’s edict, called the legal filing “merely another smoke and mirrors response by the commonwealth, as it is acutely aware that there is no NAICS code relative to the sale, manufacture or transfer of firearms and ammunition.”

He said the coding issue arises frequently for federal firearms licensees when they attempt to procure financing, “as there is no applicable code.”

Wolf’s legal team also said that voluntary requests for Pennsylvanians to stay away from one another and for businesses to close their doors and have employees work from home proved ineffective at slowing the spread of the disease, requiring more drastic action.

“Pennsylvanians refused to voluntarily engage in ‘social distancing’ to prevent the spread of COVID-19, leaving Governor Wolf with no option other than to close nonessential businesses to ‘lessen the curve’ of the disease,” the filing said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.