Florida Governor Issues Statewide Stay-at-Home Order

By Haydee Sera (Government Division)

On April 1, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued Executive Order No. 20-91, providing for a statewide stay-at-home order. A copy of the Governor’s Order is available here. The Order, which takes effect April 3, 2020 at 12:01 a.m., creates many questions about which businesses and services are essential and what an essential activity is. We are here to assist you in implementing the Order and the various lists incorporated therein.

The Governor’s Order at Section 2(a) incorporates the United States Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) recently issued “Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce” advisory list. A copy of CISA’s “Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce: Ensuring Community and National Resilience in COVID-19 Response Version 2.0” is available here. CISA’s Guidance is extensive and we are analyzing it to help our clients understand what is an essential business or service under that list.

In addition, the Governor’s Order incorporates Miami-Dade County’s designation of essential services. Miami-Dade’s list of essential businesses and services have been set forth in a series of emergency orders, particularly Miami-Dade County Emergency Order 07-20, which has been amended three times to date. To assist our clients and the public with understanding what is deemed an essential service, we have consolidated the essential retail and commercial businesses that may remain open based on the emergency orders issued by Miami-Dade County. To view the consolidated Miami-Dade County list, click here.

We are actively monitoring the quickly evolving essential businesses and services list. If you are unsure whether a certain business or service is deemed essential, please contact a member of our Government Division.