A federal appeals court reversed the previous decision of siding with the CDC, now sides with Florida over the No-Sail Orders from the CDC.
The conflict began as Gov. DeSantis announced the lawsuit over the CDC’s restrictions on the cruise industry – a significant source of income for Florida. In June, the DeSantis administration received a preliminary injunction in their favor from a federal district court in Tampa. However, last weekend the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued a temporary stay of the injunction with a vote of 2-1 before the lower court’s ruling, which was to go into effect on July 18. The court’s conclusion stated the CDC’s rules on the cruise industry “are likely unconstitutional and overstepping their legal authority.”
The votes for the stay were Clinton appointee Charles Wilson and Obama appointee Jill Pryor. Elizabeth Branch was appointed by Trump with the dissented vote.
On Monday, in response to the ruling, Lauren Cassedy, director of Public Affairs for Attorney General Ashley Moody, told Breitbart News, “It is unacceptable that a federal agency would single out and lock down an entire industry indefinitely.”
She added, “We are currently reviewing all available legal options and will continue to fight on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Floridians who rely on the cruise industry for their livelihoods.”
Florida “filed an Emergency Application to Vacate the Eleventh Circuit’s Stay on the Preliminary Injunction” on Friday. The Eleventh Circuit reversed its earlier decision on the same day. Therefore allowing the cruise industry to operate while ignoring the CDC’s restrictions, which included likeness to vaccine passports, which are illegal in Florida:
The panel sua sponte VACATES its order of July 17, 2021, and substitutes the following order in its place:
The appellants’ “Team Sesitive Motion for Stay Pending Appeal and Administrative Stay” is DENIED because appellants failed to demonstrate an entitlement to a stay pending appeal. See Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 434 (2009).
There are four factors under the Nken standard considered by the court. One is if the appellants are likely to win on the merits ultimately. The reversal from the appellate court suggests after closer examination; the liberal panel determined DeSantis is correct.
DeSantis said in a statement, “I’m glad to see the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reverse its prior decision and free the cruise lines from unlawful CDC mandates, which effectively mothballed the industry for more than a year.”
“The importance of this case extends beyond the cruise industry. From here on out, a federal bureau will be on thin legal and constitutional ice if and when it attempts to exercise such sweeping authority that is not explicitly delineated by law,” he added.
The victory “extends beyond any one industry,” the press secretary for the governor, Christina Pushaw, told Breitbart News.
“This is a win for common sense and rule of law. Unelected bureaucrats don’t have any right to prohibit people from doing their jobs or enjoying their lives, and vaccine passports are an invasion of privacy,” she said. “Yet again, Governor DeSantis stood up for Floridians against an unconstitutional bureaucratic power grab — and won.”
DeSantis signed a measure banning vaccine passports to be used in the state in May. That law went into effect on July 1:
“It’s the CDC who is mandating, effectively, a vaccine passport which is discriminatory because we have 100 million-plus Americans who have recovered from COVID. They have immunity,” DeSantis told Breitbart News during an exclusive interview in June.
“Many of them are not getting vaccinated because they’re already immune. So we don’t believe that that’s good policy to allow that,” Desantis explained.
“Just understand. If the CDC would take their boot off the necks of the industry, they would sail from Florida. This is not as much a disagreement between Florida and the cruise lines as it is between [the] CDC. So cruise lines are kind of caught in the middle because [the] CDC has issued all these mandates saying, ‘OK, you can finally sail, but you got to do all this stuff.’ So they’re in the position where they have the feds coming down on them and saying they have to do it one way,” he added.
Some of the busiest ports in the world, Port Miami, Port Canaveral, and Port Everglades, call Florida home.
Florida v. Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services, No. 21-12243, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.