Grand Rapids Reporter

A handful of Michigan businesses have taken their issues with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive authority to court, Crain’s Detroit Business reported.

Five companies (Signature Sotheby’s International Realty Inc., in Birmingham, Executive Property Maintenance Inc. in Canton, Intraco Corp. Inc. in Troy, Casite Intraco LLC, also in Troy, and Hillsdale’s Bahash & Co. LLC) have officially sued Gov. Whitmer amid her controversial stay-at-home order, claiming that it has caused their companies to take major financial hits.

The lawsuit calls out the governor, stating that she “placed 10 million people under house arrest and taken jobs away from nearly 1.2 million people, all without due process law,” according to Crain’s Detroit Business. 

While the suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, it could go as high as the U.S. Supreme Court as the companies attempt to put restrictions on Whitmer’s ability to hand down executive orders. 

The lawsuit alleges, according to Crain’s Detroit Business, "For the first time in our state’s history -- indeed, in our nation’s history -- the state government is mass-quarantining healthy people instead of the sick. As a free people, we have the unalienable right to pursue happiness, which includes the freedom to make our own choices about our safety and welfare without unconstitutional interference. In the face of the coronavirus, it means the freedom to choose whether to stay at home, or to keep calm and carry on with the things that make life worth living.”

The companies claim they’ve suffered monetary injuries but didn’t specify how much they’ve lost.

The suit continues, alleging that while the number of people who have died because of COVID-19 is unlike anything the state has ever seen, so, too, is Whitmer's reaction.

It also compared Whitmer’s response to that of governors before her, who have navigated through pandemics like the Spanish flu, the polio epidemic and the Hong Kong flu.