County Executive Parisi’s Statement on Amicus Brief Supporting Wisconsin’s Safer at Home Orders

April 24, 2020
Ariana Vruwink, 608-267-8823
County Executive

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi today directed county attorneys to intervene with a case pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court regarding the Governor's Safer at Home Orders. At the request of the County Executive, the county will file legal briefs in support of protecting the public health of Dane County residents. Dane County has seen nearly 400 confirmed cases of COVID-19, but that number is expected to climb in the coming days as testing for the virus becomes more readily available.

“At no time in our generation have we needed our leaders to cast aside partisanship and come together for the good of the people. But instead, Republican leaders have chosen a path that endangers people’s lives for partisan gain. 

“If this order is lifted prematurely, countless lives will be lost, our economy will be plunged into even more of a shamble, and we will experience a second wave of COVID-19 worse than the first.

“Right now, the fate and lives of thousands of Wisconsinites rest in the hands of our Supreme Court.

“The question to be answered then is: Will the Supreme Court, as the body that stands as our last hope for logic and independence, rise to the occasion and serve the will of the people, our constitution, and the wisdom of science, or will they, too, succumb to the pull of partisan division and deliver the last blow to representative democracy in the state of Wisconsin – causing untold suffering and loss of life to the residents we were all elected to serve and protect?

“If we can’t put partisan division aside now, then when?”