## Facts

- In response to COVID-19, Janel Heinrich, the Public Health Officer for Madison and Dane County, issued an emergency public-health order aimed at reducing virus transmission in schools.
- The order barred in-person instruction for grades 3–12 at public and private schools in Dane County, while allowing limited in-person services and allowing in-person instruction for earlier grades.
- Heinrich asserted that Wisconsin’s communicable-disease statutes authorized her to impose these countywide restrictions on in-person schooling.
- Multiple Wisconsin petitioners—including parents, religious schools, and religious organizations—filed separate challenges, contending that:
  - Heinrich lacked statutory authority to close schools countywide to in-person instruction; and
  - the order unlawfully burdened religious exercise by preventing in-person religious education.
- The Wisconsin Supreme Court accepted original jurisdiction and consolidated the actions to resolve the validity of the school-closure provisions.

## Issues

1. Did Wisconsin law authorize a local public health officer to prohibit in-person instruction for grades 3–12 in all public and private schools countywide by emergency order?
2. Did the order’s prohibition on in-person instruction at religious schools violate the free-exercise protections of the Wisconsin Constitution?

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the statutes relied on by the public health officer did not grant authority for a blanket, countywide shutdown of in-person instruction for grades 3–12 at all public and private schools.
- The court also held that the school-closure provisions, as applied to religious schools and families seeking in-person religious education, violated the Wisconsin Constitution’s protection of religious exercise.
- The court declared the challenged school-closure provisions unlawful and barred their enforcement.

## Legal Principles

- Public officials and local agencies may exercise only the authority the legislature has granted; broad emergency measures require a clear statutory basis.
- When a general public-health statute is invoked to justify sweeping action, courts read it in light of related, more specific statutes that allocate responsibility for school operations and closure decisions.
- The Wisconsin Constitution protects religious exercise that includes religious schooling and religious instruction carried out in-person as part of a faith community’s practice.
- Government action that substantially burdens religious exercise and is not neutral or generally applicable is subject to demanding judicial review; the government must justify the burden with a sufficiently strong interest and a close fit between the restriction and that interest.

## Conclusion

*James v. Heinrich* invalidated a Dane County COVID-19 emergency order that barred in-person instruction for grades 3–12, holding that the local public health officer lacked statutory authority to impose a countywide school shutdown and that the order violated Wisconsin’s constitutional guarantee of free exercise as applied to religious schools and families seeking in-person religious education.


James v. Heinrich, 960 N.W.2d 350 (2021)