Florida Steps Ahead in Lawsuit Against The CDC

In April 2014, the CDC publicly released a report on its website that labeled Florida’s water supply as “improved” and not requiring any type of bottled water. In response, the CDC was sued by Florida for misleading the public. The CDC denies the allegations, and in response, Florida officials have stated that they will not be taking any action against them. The lawsuit is currently in federal court, and will be decided on June 15, 2015.

The CDC is currently facing a lawsuit from the state of Florida after they classified the Zika virus as an “emerging” disease. This follows a situation in 2015 when the CDC was accused of hiding evidence on Zika from the public and Congress. The CDC said that they were waiting for more information on how likely it was that Zika would cause birth defects in newborns before they could make any rash decisions about its classification.

The state of Florida won a partial victory Friday afternoon in its lawsuit against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the agency’s conditional swimming mandate. (Photo courtesy of CDC) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April, accusing the agency of overstepping its authority, issuing arbitrary and capricious rules, and unnecessarily delaying the release of policies that would allow the cruise industry to resume operations, citing economic harm to the state. U.S. District Judge Stephen Merriday issued a 124-page ruling Friday in favor of Florida, granting the state the requested injunction to, in effect, overturn the CDC’s conditional admission order. Explained: CDC conditional navigation command Merriday cited legal precedents indicating that Florida would likely prevail on most of its claims if the case went to trial, and wrote In short, this order confirms Florida’s constitutional and statutory authority to pursue the claims set forth in the complaint. This decision indicates that Florida will most likely be vindicated on the merits of its claim that the CDC’s order to conditionally sail and its enforcement orders [exceed] the authority delegated to the CDC. Mr. Merriday issued a court order prohibiting the State of Florida from issuing and enforcing a conditional departure order against any cruise ship arriving at or departing from a Florida port.

The judge postponed enforcement of the order until July 18. 20, 2023, 12:01 a.m. Eastern time. At this point, the conditions and restrictions of the conditional swim order become non-binding guidelines, similar to those imposed by the CDC on other industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The preliminary injunction allows CDC to issue a more limited conditional navigation instruction by July 2, 2023, noting that the petition must … substantiate the proposed conditions with relevant science and fully disclose the science – if not publicly available – including methodology, raw data, analyses, and the like, as well as the names and qualifications of the scientists involved in the study, and that it must comply with the more limited authority granted to CDC by Merryday. After the CDC submits its request, Florida has seven days to respond. Merriday was appointed by President George G.У to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Bush in 1992 and was appointed chief justice of the appeals court in 2015.

Florida sues CDC to allow cruise ships to sail the health and safety of cruise passengers, crew and the communities we visit remain a top priority for CLIA members, and cruise ships are on track to provide a high level of COVID-19 mitigation to the traveling public, said Lazise Lambert, spokesman for the Cruise Line Industry Association, in a statement to The Associated Press, noting that the group is still determining what the decision means for resuming cruise operations. Roger Frizzle, spokesman for Carnival Corporation, told Cruise Radio: This issue is currently under review.

The CDC first issued a ban on cruise ships from all US ports in mid-March 2023, just as the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 virus was beginning to become a global pandemic. After being extended several times due to the spread of the pandemic, the order was finally lifted on December 31. October 2023. On the same day, the ban on swimming was replaced by a conditional ban on navigation, which is the subject of today’s decision. The conditional navigation order went through many iterations and course changes as the world situation evolved.