Republican lawmakers in Michigan plan to introduce bills to limit what the state’s emergency alert system sends after Governor Gretchen Whitmer sent a state alert to cell phones urging residents to wear masks.
Senator Peter Lucido and Representative Bradley Slagh will introduce legislation next week to restrict the emergency alert system to urgent emergencies or natural disasters, according to local reports.
“This is a manifest abuse of a service designed to alert people to legitimate emergencies: the governor has gone beyond the scope and intent of the law and is now somewhere above the rainbow and approaching Oz,” Lucido said in a statement, according to MLive.
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On Monday afternoon, a text alert informed Michigan cell phone users of Whitmer’s executive order to wear a mask in indoor and outdoor public spaces where social estrangement is not possible. He also said that companies should reject the service to those who do not cover their faces.
Previously, the Whitmer administration had used the emergency alert system to notify residents when their stay-at-home order went into effect in March.
Republican Majority Leader in the state Senate Mike Shirley said in a statement Tuesday that he encouraged people to wear masks in public and avoid altercations for wearing a mask.
“No citizen should challenge another regarding the wearing of a mask,” he said. “There is no reason to risk your health or your life over the debate about wearing masks in public.”
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A security guard was shot and killed in Flint, Mich earlier this year when he told the gunman’s daughter that he needed to wear a mask inside a Family Dollar.
As of Thursday, 38 states have instituted a mask requirement statewide.
