City attorney sues Lamont over mask order
A Stamford attorney has filed a lawsuit against Gov. Ned Lamont contending that the governor’s response to COVID-19 infringes on individual liberties.
In his lawsuit, Lindy Urso, a Greenwich resident, challenges Lamont’s executive order requiring residents to wear face coverings in public spaces where “close contact is unavoidable.” The measure, which Lamont announced Friday, is slated to take effect at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
The order is intended to “[build] upon [Lamont’s] efforts to encourage mitigation strategies that slow down transmission of the virus,” according to a press release.
Max Reiss, a spokesman for the governor, said Lamont would not comment on Urso’s lawsuit. Urso, who has a history of vehemently opposing legislation that would require vaccinations among school-bound children, provided a copy of the lawsuit to Hearst Connecticut Media. He filed it in federal court on Saturday and is the sole plaintiff, he said.
Overall, Urso disapproves of the state shutdown, he said.
“This measure [the masks order] has pushed me over the
edge because I don’t wear a mask and I don’t think I should be forced to wear a mask,” he said.
The lawsuit alleges that Lamont’s executive orders represent “everincreasing encroachments” to “individual freedoms and liberties” and demands that Connecticut District Court rule the mask order unconstitutional.
The state confirmed 50 new COVID-19 deaths on Saturday, bringing Connecticut’s death toll up to 1,086, according to Lamont’s office. The number of residents who have tested positive for COVID-19 continues to climb, according to state data, which shows it hit 17,550 Saturday, up by 741 from Friday.
However, statewide hospitalizations related to COVID-19 decreased by eight people, state data shows. It was the first time since the start of the pandemic that the number went down, Lamont said on Twitter, adding that the decrease provided some hope.
“But 1 day of data alone does not mean we are out of the woods and can return to life as normal,” he wrote. “Many of our hospitals and nursing homes remain under stress, and front line workers continue to battle around the clock. But with proper measures in place, we can slow down its spread.”
When Lamont declared a public health and civil preparedness emergency on March 10, he invoked sections 19a-131a and 28-9 of Connecticut general statutes.
The first section enables the state to quarantine or isolate individuals it reasonably believes have been exposed to a communicable disease, according to the language in the statute.
Section 28-9 does not specifically address quarantine measures, but it does say that “the governor may take such other steps as are reasonably necessary in the light of the emergency to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people of the state.”
Urso’s lawsuit contends that the latter portion of section 28-9 is too broad and asks the court to rule it unconstitutional.
Moreover, Urso argues that neither statute authorizes quarantining healthy people and contends that as the plaintiff, he is a healthy individual.
Urso sees requiring healthy people to wears mask in the same context as he sees quarantining healthy people, he said, adding that he believes both measures infringe upon individual freedoms.
Urso’s lawsuit argues that Lamont’s order is a violation of the attorney’s right to make personal medical decisions, alleging that being forced to wear a mask restricts his access to fresh air, which he believes will help him fight the virus.
Urso’s suit also cites a CBS report from March 3. In the report, a Health and Human Services official cautions that if your mask isn’t wellfitted, you could fumble with it and touch your face, increasing your risk of contracting the virus.
Official guidance on mask wearing has since changed drastically, however.
Ryan Steele, an immunologist and allergist at Yale School of Medicine, said basic masks can help curb the spread of the coronavirus, but only if enough people use them.
What’s more, they do not work by protecting the person wearing it. Instead, they keep the wearer from infecting others.
As compared to N95 masks, cloth and surgical face coverings do not provide sufficient protection for the wearer because they fail to filter out aerosolized coronavirus particles, according to Steele.
But that doesn’t make the masks useless. Instead, they help prevent the wearer from giving the virus to others by catching most of the droplets the wearer expels, Steele said.
Besides the medical aspect of the order, Urso contends that it violates his right to privacy, his right to move freely and his right to expression.
For example, by not wearing a mask, Urso says he is protesting alleged “fear-mongering, exaggeration, misinformation and other perceived misdeeds by our state and federal governments and our media in connection with this viral outbreak.”
Thus, the order requiring him to wear a mask interferes with his ability to protest, he argues.
Urso’s opposition to the masks order lies in the same vein as his opposition to mandated vaccinations— he sees both measures as infringements on individual liberties, he said.