Four Michigan healthcare providers and a patient seeking a knee replacement filed a federal lawsuit against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer May 12 claiming that the state of emergency violates constitutional rights, Mlive reports.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Robert Gordon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, were also named in the suit, which calls for the reopening of healthcare facilities for procedures deemed "nonessential."
The COVID-19 curve in Michigan "has flattened" and providers are "on the brink of financial ruin" as a result of the "unlawfully declared state of emergency," according to the lawsuit.
The suit claims that the foundation for the governor's March 10 state of emergency declaration featured "grossly inaccurate" data from the CDC, forecasting a worst-case scenario of the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
CDC in March projected between 160 million and 214 million COVID-19 cases and 200,000 to 1.7 million deaths nationwide.
As of 7:30 a.m. CDT May 13, there have been 1,370,460 confirmed cases and 82,391 deaths related to COVID-19 in the U.S, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.