Governor Mike Dunleavy announced that Alaska has joined Florida in a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It challenges the CDC’s shutdown of the cruise industry through its Conditional Sailing Order on the grounds that it goes beyond the scope of the CDC’s legal authority. The lawsuit states that the Conditional Sailing Order fails to recognize the cruise industry’s voluntary safety measures and the safe resumption of cruising in other countries. According to the press release, over 400,000 passengers returned to cruising in nearly a dozen other countries, resulting in less than 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Gov. Dunleavy stated in a prepared video (see below),
The lawsuit states that the Conditional Sailing Order doesn’t take into account the high vaccination rate of Alaskans, the effectiveness of the vaccines against COVID-19, and the low COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the state. The governor says that the CDC’s Conditional Sailing Order treats the cruise industry, and the jobs and businesses that depend on tourism, differently from other travel sectors like air or rail. The Order reportedly also requires expensive and time-consuming trials for ships before they could return to service.
Gov. Dunleavy in a press conference last Friday stated, “What my concern is this will be two years in a row that we may lose some of this investment on a permanent basis. We’re going to work to not have that happen, but we need a little help from the CDC and from the federal government. All we’re asking them is to let us work with our cruise ship industry just like we did with the other industries to put together a way to deal with this. In the event that doesn’t occur, we’re fully prepared to file suit to talk about damages to our state, to our businesses, to our municipalities.”
Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor said, “Through this lawsuit, Alaska seeks to protect its citizens and its interests by forcing the CDC to act within the limited authority Congress granted it. (The) CDC simply does not have the authority to arbitrarily shut down an entire industry.”
