A federal appeals court will hear arguments in late July related to the county's lawsuit challenging Gov. Tom Wolf's 2020 COVID-19-related business shutdown and similar orders.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which hears appeals from federal courts in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, scheduled oral arguments for July 22 in the case regarding whether Wolf's business-closure, stay-at-home and other orders were constitutional.

Judge William S. Stickman IV, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, held in September that Wolf's orders ran afoul of the constitution, ruling in favor of four Butler County politicians and seven county businesses. Stickman dismissed Butler, Fayette, Greene and Washington counties from the case, stating they lacked capacity to sue.

In Stickman's 66-page memorandum opinion, the judge noted Wolf undertook his actions “with the good intention of addressing a public health emergency” but stated “even in an emergency, the authority of government is not unfettered,” ruling ultimately the governor's orders violated the assembly clause of the First Amendment and the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Yet in October, the appellate court stayed Stickman's ruling pending appeal without further comment.

The case to be argued will likely look different in July 2021 than it did in 2020, with much of the commonwealth's restrictions lifted because of the waning of the pandemic. Although the court directed the parties in March to, in part, argue whether the governor's orders then remained in effect — at the time, much of them were modified but not revoked — the landscape changed in May, when voters approved a state constitutional amendment giving the legislature the power to override a governor's disaster emergency declaration.

Neither Wolf nor the plaintiffs in the case have discussed the constitutional amendment or the legislature's move last week to end Wolf's declaration, with the plaintiffs' latest brief to the court citing a Supreme Court case in which the nation's high court ruled challenges to COVID-19 restrictions are not moot so long as they may still be implemented.

The plaintiffs argued the governor's actions in December — when, despite having previously lifted similar orders, Pennsylvania reimplemented certain business-closure and occupancy limits — show Wolf could still unilaterally place restrictions on Pennsylvanians.

In a state court case, however, Superior Court Judge Patricia McCullough said June 9 the commonwealth's restrictions on schools “can occur again” and are not moot despite the voters' passage of the amendment, after an attorney for Butler Area School District argued the state's police powers and orders handed down by various other executive agencies — such as the Departments of Education and Health — may have similar impacts to the governor's disaster declarations.