Pa. Federal Judge Finds Governor’s COVID-19 Shutdown Orders ‘Unconstitutional’

PITTSBURGH — A Pennsylvania federal judge has ruled that certain measures taken by the commonwealth's governor in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including closing non-life-sustaining businesses and limiting how many people may gather in one place, were “unconstitutional.”

In a Sept. 14 order, Judge William S. Stickman IV of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania said that while Governor Thomas Wolf’s administration “undertook their actions in a well-intentioned effort to protect Pennsylvanians from the virus,” the Constitution “sets certain lines that may not be crossed, even in an emergency.”

The Wolf administration says it will file …