After the Michigan Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 2 that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic executive orders were unlawful and unconstitutional, state officials and some in the media began linking the case to a rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths weeks later. But there is little or no evidence that the court case led to the spike in COVID-19.

WXMI-TV anchor Ryan Cummings in Grand Rapids, for example, posted on Twitter on Nov. 12: “41 days ago the #Michigan Supreme Court ruled against @GovWhitmer and her executive orders related to #COVID. There were 126,358 confirmed cases on that day for the entire *year*. We are now at 236,225. Nearly double since the ruling.”

The claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It’s been repeated by Whitmer as well as University of Michigan regent Jordan Acker, who used a tweet to call the justices who ruled against the governor stooges.

Cases were already rising

On Friday, Oct. 2, when the Supreme Court issued its ruling, the state was averaging 99.2 new cases per day. (The state uses a seven-day average to measure the spread of the coronavirus.)

On Sept. 9, the state averaged 69.1 new cases per day, meaning it was already in the midst of a spike in new cases, according to worldometers.info.

People are still wearing masks

There is no evidence that when Whitmer’s executive orders were deemed unconstitutional, there was any considerable movement to stop wearing face masks.

Numerous polls have shown that the vast majority of Americans support wearing face masks, which has been the biggest tool used in this state to combat COVID-19.

A survey conducted by OnePoll and commissioned by Slickdeals was released Nov. 2 found that 83% of Americans said they always wear a mask when in public, whether it was a law or not. In Michigan, the OnePoll survey found 84% of residents said they’d wear a face mask in public, whether it was mandated or not. This is up 12 points from September, when 72% of Michigan residents said they always wear a mask in public.

The governor immediately put into place similar rules

Within hours of the ruling, media outlets such as MLive posted stories that quoted Whitmer as saying her executive orders were still in effect for another 21 days despite the high court’s ruling.

And by Monday – just three days later – the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services used a 1978 law to issue its own directives, which put virtually all of Whitmer’s orders back into effect.

There was a spike in cases across the Midwest and the nation

If the state Supreme Court ruling truly did lead to a spike in COVID-19 cases in Michigan, the Great Lakes State would have experienced a spike in cases greater than that seen in surrounding states. That did not happen.

Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Minnesota are – just like Michigan – experiencing record levels of new cases of COVID-19 since Oct. 2.

And that is captured in the national trend, which mirrors what Michigan is experiencing.

The U.S. had 52,358 new COVID-19 cases on Oct. 2, the day of the Michigan Supreme Court ruling. On Nov. 13, the county hit a peak of 187,957 new cases – more than three times the number of cases on Oct. 2.

Workers on a West Michigan road construction project who sought and won the right to seek the decertification of their union have filed an emergency appeal with the National Labor Relations Board. This comes after the election was quashed by an NLRB official on Nov. 9, just hours before the votes were to be counted.

The decision to halt the election, which came after months of legal wrangling between employees of Rieth-Riley and the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 324, was made by NLRB Regional Director Terry Morgan.

Lawyers for the dissident employees said Morgan’s ruling, based on allegations of unfair labor practices against Rieth-Riley, directly contradicts NLRB policy.

The employees “have already had to endure many months of union boss stonewalling just to exercise their right to vote out an unpopular union,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.

NLRB policy, which was updated this year, “clearly delineates why employees’ right to vote should not be delayed or hindered by unproven or unrelated union accusations against an employer,” Mix said.

Morgan, in her decision to block vote-counting, said a causal connection had been made between the allegations of unfair labor practices and the decertification petitions.

NRTW Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens said unions regularly use the filing of unfair labor practice allegations as a tactic to prohibit or delay votes on union decertification. He said this was a tactic the recently updated NLRB policy on so-called “blocking charges” was intended to address.

Semmens said he was hopeful the board would act relatively quickly to reverse the regional director’s order to quash the vote count.

A representative of Local 324 said Monday afternoon that no one was immediately available to comment on the case.

Rieth-Riley, one of the state’s largest road construction operations, has been the locus of a long-running labor dispute over the use of nonunion subcontractors, and Local 324 went out on strike there in 2019. The company has continued to operate with replacement workers and employees who crossed the picket line.

One of those employees said in August 2019 that “the union is using us as pawns in a power play to get their way.”

According to NLRB documents, about 160 affected employees — including current and replacement workers, plus strikers who had not returned to work — were eligible to vote in the decertification election.

NRTW Foundation’s Semmens said he was unsure how many had voted in the decertification election (which was conducted by mail because of COVID precautions). He added, “We may never know if they won’t count the votes.”