A federal judge in Florida issued a preliminary temporary injunction barring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from enforcing COVID-era sailing guidelines because they were an overreach of power, the Hill reports.
In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) filed a lawsuit on behalf of the state against the CDC arguing that the sailing orders issued by the CDC for cruise lines were “arbitrary and capricious” and amounted to an unconstitutional overstepping of the agency’s authority.
Judge Steven Merryday approved Florida’s motion suspending the mandatory guidelines for cruise ships, writing that the CDC is “preliminary enjoined from enforcing against a cruise ship arriving in, within, or departing from a port in Florida the conditional sailing order and the later measures.”
“Never has CDC conditioned pratique as extensively and burdensomely as the conditional sailing order; and never has CDC imposed restrictions that have summarily dismissed the effectiveness of state regulation and halted for an extended time an entire multi-billion dollar industry nationwide,” Merryday wrote in his ruling.
“In a word, never has CDC implemented measures as extensive, disabling, and exclusive as those under review in this action,” he added.
The cruise industry had previously been under a conditional sailing order issued by the CDC since the end of October, under which cruise lines were required to commit to a phased approach of implementing testing and other safety measures before they could start sailing.
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