ST. PAUL (AP) — The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Gov. Tim Walz had the legal authority to require the wearing of masks when he declared a public health emergency early in the COVID-19 pandemic. made a judgment that

Waltz declared a peacetime emergency in March 2020 and mandated mask wearing in most indoor public spaces in July 2020. The conservative Upper Midwest Law Center has filed a lawsuit claiming the mask mandate is unconstitutional. Waltz was released from this mandate in May 2021, at which point the Court of Appeals declared the case void.

But in February, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the key legal issue behind the case—namely, the Minnesota Emergency Management Act of 1996—has given the governor peacetime emergency assistance during public health emergencies such as: We have remanded the case to the Court of Appeals to resolve whether we are giving power to declare the situation. Pandemic. The High Court called it “a matter of great statewide concern.”

The Court of Appeals ruled that the coronavirus “most likely” came from a laboratory leak and that the resulting pandemic did not occur “naturally” and therefore was not a “natural phenomenon” under state law. The plaintiffs’ allegations were dismissed as “unreasonable.” .

An appeals court earlier this year used similar legal reasoning when it dismissed the plea of ​​a woman convicted of running a wine bar and restaurant in Albert Lee in violation of the governor’s pandemic order.