Fact check: Did Gov. Gavin Newsom admit that his state of emergency was illegal?

Many of California’s COVID-19 restrictions were rolled back months ago, so it can be easy to forget that the Golden State is still under a pandemic state of emergency.

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared the emergency on March 4, 2020, as COVID-19 surged across California, the country and the globe. The declaration, made under the California Emergency Services Act, was the source of authority for mask orders, school closures, other actions.

The measure has been a sore point for Newsom’s Republican critics, who allege that he has used it to circumvent the Legislature.

Claim: Rocklin Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who is running for Congress, said in a July 16 tweet, “Newsom just admitted the State of Emergency is illegal. He says he’s only keeping it in place because the Legislature won’t pass the laws he wants.”

Kiley subsequently repeated the allegation on Twitter and wrote a blog post about it for his 3rd District congressional campaign, referring to it as a “critical error.”

Rating: False. Newsom made no such admission.

Details: Kiley is referring to an interview that Gov. Newsom did with Fox 11 LA’s Elex Michaelson last Saturday, which you can watch on Twitter. Michaelson asked Newsom whether there is “any end date” for the emergency that has been in place for more than two years.

Newsom defended the declaration, which he says allows people to get COVID-19 test results much quicker than if there was no order in place.

“Just think about that. Hundreds of thousands of tests a week, how many weeks would it take to get your test results back if we didn’t have that state of emergency? It is incredibly important, particularly on the basis of this new variant that’s going back out,” Newsom said.

He then added that California has rolled back “90-plus percent” of all critical provisions of the executive order.

Michaelson asked Newsom why he doesn’t just change the law on test results.

“Thank you, I keep telling the Legislature, especially some of these folks out there outraged and they didn’t even introduce legislation to change it. I mean you can’t make this stuff up,” Newsom said.

Newsom said there are difficulties with changing the law that could have “consequences across the spectrum.”

He added, “People would prefer to have a governor do it and then say, ‘I would do it differently.’”

Reached for comment, Joshua Hoover, Kiley’s legislative spokesman, said in an email that Newsom’s admission that the state of emergency is illegal “is not open to dispute.”

“The governor stated, in his own words, that his reason for maintaining the emergency is that the Legislature has not passed his preferred legislation. Disagreement with a co-equal branch of government is not grounds for an emergency declaration,” Hoover said.

He pointed to the emergency services law, which says a state of emergency requires “conditions of disaster or of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property within the state” and that “the governor shall proclaim the termination of a state of emergency at the earliest possible date that conditions warrant.”

Hoover said that Newsom is “in direct violation of his legal duty to terminate the emergency.”

Erin Mellon, spokeswoman for Newsom’s office, said in an email that Kiley’s remarks are “just plainly inaccurate.”

“The state of emergency is perfectly legal and remains open because it is necessary to respond to the COVID pandemic. Only 5% of the COVID-19-related executive order provisions issued throughout the pandemic remain in place. These include provisions that are critical to the state’s hospitals, vaccination and testing programs,” Mellon said.

While it’s true that Newsom did say that the state of emergency allows him to do things that otherwise would require legislative action, at no point during the interview did the governor admit that it was illegal.

This story was originally published July 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.