BOULDER, Colo. — There has been a lot of confusion about whether CU Boulder students are allowed to go to work under the public health order prohibiting gatherings of 18- to 22-year-olds.
Boulder County Public Health said the order prohibits students ages 18 to 22 that live in a property under a stay at home order from going to work. A full list of those properties can be found on Boulder County Public Health’s website.
>Video above: Boulder bans gatherings among people ages 18 to 22 due to COVID-19.
Students between the ages 18 and 22 years old that do not live in a property under a stay-at-home order can go to work. This includes students living in dorms on campus.
Boulder County Public Health said that all the properties under a stay-at-home order are located off-campus. This includes many of the Greek organization houses and houses with groups of students living in them.
Students that are unable to work during the order are eligible for unemployment benefits.
Some students and parents are claiming this public health order to be unconstitutional. However, a state statute says that county health departments do have the right to enforce quarantines and prohibit gatherings.
Boulder County Public Health’s website says, “Colo. Rev. Stat. § 25-1-506(3)(b) authorizes BCPH to take action and issue notices and orders to control the spread of communicable diseases such as COVID-19. This authority includes the establishment, maintenance, and enforcement of isolation and quarantine as BCPH finds necessary to protect public health and to prevent further spread of diseases.”
9NEWS Legal Analyst Whitney Traylor said that if people do file a lawsuit against Boulder County for the public health order being unconstitutional, it would all come down to medical data, and whether the order was necessary to stop the spread of the virus.
"If they can justify that, ‘Yes, this is going to stop what’s happening in Boulder County,' then they will probably prevail, the parents, for them to win, they’re going to have to show that this was an overreach, that they didn’t need this type of quarantine," Traylor said.
Traylor said that even if people do pursue a lawsuit, the stay-at-home order will most likely be over by then, and they will have to focus on damages caused by the public health order, such as loss of income or psychological impacts.
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