Alarmed by the dramatic rise in new coronavirus cases, Florida attorneys filed a lawsuit this week that seeks to block the Republican National Convention from taking place in Jacksonville next month.
The legal action coincides with Florida’s new title as the nation’s new virus epicenter and threatens the GOP’s signature campaign event slightly more than six weeks away.
The situation in Florida
The state set a record last Saturday with 11,458 new cases in a day, the most for any state since the start of the pandemic, according to reports. Nearly 10,000 confirmed cases were added Wednesday, bringing Florida’s total since March 1 to nearly 224,000, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Almost 4,000 people have died, including 48 reported by the state Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.
The state shows that 41 of the state’s 208 hospital intensive care units are at capacity and another 49 are at 90% capacity or greater. The list includes hospitals with large intensive care units such as Tampa General, Baptist Hospital of Miami and UF Health Jacksonville.
What the complaint says
The complaint, filed Wednesday in Duval County Circuit Court, describes the Aug. 24 gathering to renominate President Donald Trump as a potential "super spreader event" that would be "a nuisance injurious to the health (and) welfare" of the city, according to CNN, citing local attorney Jim Blecke.
"The congregation of thousands of people in close proximity for extended periods of time will constitute a nuisance and result in massive spread of COVID-19 among the persons in attendance and throughout the City of Jacksonville and Northeast Florida and interfere in Plaintiffs' use and enjoyment of their property and right to be free of infliction of disease and death," the court document states, according to CNN.
The suit suggests a connection between the current spike in cases and the state’s loosening of restrictions in recent weeks.
“To avoid community spread of COVID-19 and to protect the health and welfare of Plaintiffs and the community, it is necessary and essential that all super spreader events where large numbers of people congregate in close proximity indoors not occur,” the suit states.
The plan in Jacksonville
The convention plans to provide daily coronavirus testing at a 15,000-capacity arena.
Last week, Jacksonville officials said face masks would be required in public and indoor locations and where social distancing was not possible.
An earlier itinerary scheduled Trump to give his acceptance speech at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena on Aug. 27, the last day of the convention, CNN reported.
How we got here
The national Republican Party moved the event from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jacksonville in early June after Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said he would not allow the convention to go forward in North Carolina without the “proper health protocols in place.”
Trump at that time expressed that he wanted a full-blown convention free from social distancing measures.
Some GOP senators to skip
On Tuesday, however, as a growing number of Republican senators said they would skip the event, Trump said he would remain “flexible” on the size of the Jacksonville convention.
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, 86, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, 80, were among those saying they would stay away from the event. A few other Republicans, including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, have also said they’re not attending.
President Donald Trump: ‘We’re flexible’
Asked in an interview Tuesday whether he’d want to limit the gathering if the state’s coronavirus cases continue to rise, Trump replied that the decision “really depends on the timing.”
“We’re always looking at different things,” Trump said during an interview on Gray Television's “Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren.”
“When we signed a few weeks ago, it looked good,” the president continued. “And now, all of a sudden, it’s spiking up a little bit. And that’s going to go down. It really depends on the timing. Look, we’re very flexible.”
The White House, meanwhile, continues to tamp down nationwide concern about the resurging spread. About a dozen states are reporting a dramatic rise in cases with more than 3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases nationally and more than 132,000 deaths.
Houston cancels on GOP
Elsewhere, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner on Wednesday canceled the Texas Republican Party’s in-person convention that was planned for July 16, saying the spread of the coronavirus made it impossible to hold the event as scheduled.
The Texas GOP agreed to provisions in the contract which allowed the city to rescind the rental deal on the downtown convention center for the three-day event.
“The public health concerns outweighed anything else,” said Turner, who previously resisted calls to cancel the convention, according to the AP.
Information from The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
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