GRAND RAPIDS, MI (WTVB) – A federal judge ruled Friday that Michigan’s indoor gyms can reopen June 25 in spite of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order keeping them closed.
Grand Rapids U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney granted a preliminary injunction that halted the executive orders requiring the closure of the facilities at the request of the League of Independent Fitness Facilities and Trainers Inc. and a group of 22 companies operating gyms in Michigan.
“Unfortunately, on the record before it, the court has not been presented with any evidence that shows a rational relation between the continued closure of indoor gyms and the preservation of public health,” said Maloney.
The judge said gyms reopening June 25 must follow workplace safety standards laid out in Whitmer’s executive orders.
The governor plans to appeal the decision to the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and “respectfully, but strongly, disagrees with this decision.”
“With this ruling, the court is playing a dangerous role it should not play: second-guessing and upending the data-informed decisions that have saved thousands of lives in Michigan,” Whitmer spokeswoman Tiffany Brown said.
“The idea that gyms — with their high levels of heavy respiratory activity, shared indoor spaces, and shared surfaces — might be one of the later businesses to come back online in the midst of this global pandemic is hardly surprising
Gym officials had argued in their suit against the state that the continued ban on fitness centers violates the businesses’ rights to due process, equal protection and commerce law — violations they argued “do not survive even rational basis review.”
They argued that gyms “are basically the only category of businesses that remain closed in Michigan” without the scientific data to support that closure. The fitness facilities argued against their closure while restaurants, hair salons, massage facilities, tattoo parlors and public swimming pools could reopen.
Maloney said he pressed the state for evidence, data or rationale to support gyms’ continued closure but the Whitmer administration “vaguely stated that indoor gyms are a ‘petri dish’ of infection.”
