Santa Clara County, one of the Bay Area counties until public health orders to shelter in place, so police can use that justification.
So far the state as taken a light touch and left it up to the counties to respond to the virus in their communities. The CA governor has broad powers if he decides to use them.
Under the authority of the Emergency Services Act, the governor possesses widespread power to respond during a state of emergency such as a pandemic, said Stephen M. Duvernay, senior research fellow at Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center.
The governor has authority to commandeer private property, including hospitals, medical labs, hotels and motels, and put them under the state’s authority — something Newsom authorized state agencies to do in an executive order issued last week. The governor also has the authority to suspend state regulations. For example, after the 1994 Northridge earthquake Gov. Pete Wilson suspended regulations under the California Environmental Quality Act — a nearly half-century-old law that requires developers to disclose a project’s environmental effects and take steps to reduce or eliminate them — to speed up the recovery efforts.
Newsom has the authority to redirect state funds to help in an emergency, even funds appropriated by the California Legislature for an entirely different purpose. Along with the power to quarantine during a state of emergency, California law gives state health officials — who answer to the governor — the authority to “quarantine, isolate, inspect, and disinfect persons, animals, houses, rooms, other property, places, cities, or localities, whenever in its judgment the action is necessary to protect or preserve the public health.”
The law also allows health officials to “take possession or control of the body of any living person, or the corpse of any deceased person” to prevent the spread of a contagious disease. State health officials can require the sheriff of each county to enforce orders. Newsom used his authority in a historic step on Tuesday to direct the National Guard to be prepared to perform humanitarian missions across the state, which he described as overseeing food distribution and ensuring people aren’t hoarding food at grocery stores.
Through the state agencies under his control, Newsom has authority to call in the national guard to police cities, set curfews, suspend licenses to sell liquor and other services. Under the state’s health and safety code, Newsom could also have people arrested and quarantined in their homes, said Kevin Eckery, who served as a senior aide to Wilson.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... s-response
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