Peggy Hall of The Healthy American
interviews Ohio lawyer, Thomas Renz, who is bringing a lawsuit against Ohio's Republican Governor, Mike DeWine. Here is a PDF of the suit, filed on behalf of a citizens group, called Ohio Stands Up!
About Thomas Renz, this was posted at the site, Make Americans Free Again,
Mr. Renz’s experience with
the law began with his mentor, Nuremburg Prosecutor and celebrated
international lawyer and scholar, Henry T. King, Jr.
A shortlist of other
accomplishments include: being the only American to ever serve as clerk for the
Honorable Justice Tarun Chatterjee of the Supreme Court of India, winning the
national Trailblazer Award for Political Action, assisting in advocating for numerous
state and national legislative and regulatory reforms, and many more. – From Renz
Law
Peggy's interview reviews the successes that Tom Renz has had in suing Ohio's governor, Mike DeWine over extrajudicial measures presumed in the lockdown. I will transcribe a few details of the interview below.
9:54 1300 public health officials who signed
letters that said racism is a greater public health risk than COVID.
Can’t use a health
emergency to suspend the constitution.
10:37 An emergency doesn’t
expand constitutional rights, nor does it decrease them. The rights remain the same.
This case is about
ensuring that we have those rights.
12:15 “Discovery” is a critical part of this
case.
12:25 We’re going to ask for the data, the real
data, not your translation of the data but the real data, and we’re going to
try and make it as public as possible. With
that, the next guy can file this case, then the next guy and the next guy . . .
. once we get done, you can find out
whether or not if we did it right. If we
win it, we did it right, great. If we
made a mistake, you can find out where.
But you know what, all the data and effort that we put in won’t be for
naught. The data is there, so even if I am
not the greatest attorney in the world and I blow it somewhere, the next guy
can pick up where we left and we left a heck of a foundation for them.
Peggy identifies the first federal lawsuit against health orders in San Diego. The law firm is Arete Law, and the lawyer is Philip Mauriello, Jr. KUSI News reported that
A
San Diego law firm has filed a federal lawsuit against Dr. Wilma Wooten over
her face covering mandate.
Arete Law A.P.C. filed the lawsuit against San Diego County
Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten, Nick Macchione, and Helen
Robbins-Meyer, alleging that the requirement to wear a facial covering when in
public violates both U.S and California Constitutional rights.
15:20 All of our data came from the CDC and the ODH, or Ohio Dept. of Health. We didn't make any of it up. We posed a very valid question. If we're right, and we think we are, people's rights are being very much abridged. The process is set by the courts and the attorneys. The judge did indicate that he's interested in seeing this done. That's a good thing. He seems interested in seeing justice served. We have an opportunity to do it and it will set a precedent that can be used in other cases. Tom adds that at the heart of the suit is the question, "When can you declare an emergency?" He points out that "They've declared an emergency despite the fact that they had no reason to."
17:47 It's very clear to anyone in Emergency Management, whether you are an Emergency Room doctor or nurse, whether you have worked for the fire department, the police department, it's called EMT. There are Emergency Management courses you can take. I learned that there's a pre-emergency phase. In California, we're prone to earthquakes, there's Earthquake Management, Emergency Management, and all of that. You can actually become part of an Emergency Management Response Team in your city or county, and you go through training, and they tell you how to prepare for that earthquake, that flood, that disease, that outbreak. Then you've got the actual emergency. When the emergency hits, you go through all of your preassigned structures and roles, and so forth. Then there's something called the Recovery Phase. You're no longer in the emergency phase: the earthquake is over, the floodwaters have subsided, the fires have stopped burning, the chemical spill has been cleaned up. It's called Recovery. And then you have something called Mitigation. Mitigation is where you look to see what went well, how we can improve on, and how we can plan next time. Any 3rd Grader can tell you we are in the Recovery and Mitigation phases because there is no emergency. The reason why they're declaring the emergency is because it is fraud. It is fraud to get money . . . or to have gained when you've misrepresented the information. So they may be misrepresenting the science. They may be misrepresenting the numbers, and they certainly are misrepresenting in California the fact that, because it's very well-defined in California, an emergency can only be declared when the threat of the event potentially overwhelms the resources available--the personnel, and then the infrastructure. The fact that the hospitals are shutting down, the fact that healthcare workers are being laid off, okay, that's not my opinion. And if I were to go into a court of law, I would say, okay, here's the evidence. These hospitals have closed. These healthcare workers have been laid off. We have stockpiles of gowns and PPE, Personal Protective Equipment. That was another element that the governors highlighted to say, "Here's evidence for an emergency that we don't have the resources." We have abundant resources. Therefore, as I say, a third-grader could tell us there's no emergency. The governors themselves have said there's no emergency. Why? Because they all have their reopening guidelines. In California, they call it "Roadmap to Resiliency." The governor's own words are a de facto declaration of an end to the emergency. However, the counties and the cities--the state has kicked the can down the road. In California, the governor has realized that we-the-people are onto him, so he's reissued press releases because they're not official orders, press releases that say, "Oh, we would like it if you would comply. We hope that you'll be a good citizen and do this." These are not orders. So now the counties have issued health orders in terms of distancing and quarantine and all of that, but they also have very loose parameters. Then the cities have issued emergency ordinances that at least in California are completely unlawful because they violate the California Constitution and the U.S. Constitution, and then the can gets kicked down the road all the way to the store and the businesses who've now become, as the phrase goes, the strong arm of the law. The strong arm of the law means they have no legal authority or law enforcement authority to require you to do these [mitigation] measures but they are so oppressive and so belligerent in their outlooks and attitudes, they're so militant, they're so blatantly breaking the law. So I want to talk about this structure, so we get rid of the governor's emergency, what is that going to look like down the line, what other remedies can we take, and then you and I can talk about our plan for the corporate approach.
23:05 The governors know they're breaking the law. They know it's unconstitutional. They know it's nonsense. So they're trying to distribute what they're doing. They're trying to make it a multi-headed animal that no matter where you go you're getting nipped at. One of the things that we challenge in our suit is the declaration of the emergency and the science itself. If it's not justified at the state level, it's certainly not going to be justified at any other level. How do you declare there's an emergency when there's no science or data to back it? And if the CDC doesn't back it, and arguably the states don't back it, what do you have in the city that allows you to do that?
