Guthrie Heads To Federal Courthouse For Hearing Over City's Shelter In Place Order

The city of Guthrie, an Oklahoma County attorney and his clients will head to the federal courthouse in downtown Oklahoma City at 1:30 p.m. for a hearing over the city’s shelter in place order. 

Attorney Frank Urbanic and 10 Guthrie residents filed the lawsuit last week. They claimed Guthrie’s Emergency Declaration violated their 1st Amendment rights, specifically wearing face masks in public and forcing businesses to close.

“It would be a different situation if Guthrie was providing the masks,” said Attorney Frank Urbanic.

On Monday, just an hour before the original hearing, the city amended its restrictions and adopted City Ordinance 3331. It decided to follow Governor Kevin Stitt’s recommendation to open personal care businesses immediately, instead of keeping things closed until May 5th.

On Friday, the city says businesses like gyms, movie theaters, and restaurants can open up.

After that decision was made the federal lawsuit hearing was rescheduled for Wednesday.

The city is still limiting gatherings to ten people or less and requiring residents to wear face masks in public.

“The big thing we put in place was the masks,” said Brian Bothroyd, a Guthrie City Council Member during a virtual city council meeting. “And I think we need to keep that a while longer until we can see what is happening.”

“If the only thing that we have on there is the masks that is restricting people, I saw we just rescind the whole daggum thing,” said another city councilor during the meeting.

The city council ultimately voted unanimously to require face masks in places where people cannot practice social distancing.

City Councilors decided if COVID-19 cases start to go back up they will have to rework their plans and add more restrictions.

Urbanic said he used the hearing delay to look over the amendments and discuss the changes with his clients.