The case started when a group of Texas businesses, which cannot legally open, challenged local shutdown orders through an emergency petition to the state Supreme Court. Unsurprisingly the court dismissed the request and told the businesses they had to go to trial court first, where almost all lawsuits, even emergency ones, are supposed to start. However, four of the nine justices signed onto a statement warning that this and similar challenges cannot be dismissed out of hand in the lower courts simply because of the current pandemic.

"If we tolerate unconstitutional government orders during an emergency, whether out of expediency or fear," the opinion states, "we abandon the Constitution at the moment we need it most."