Federal lands, science agencies and courts

Summary

2020 Q2 (with the March 13-31, 2020 run-up): the Secretary of the Interior waived all park entrance fees and empowered superintendents to close facilities (Mar. 18, 2020), then directed every non-mission-essential Interior employee to telework (Mar. 22, 2020); Yellowstone and Grand Teton closed to all visitors Mar. 24, 2020 at the request of four county health officers, Yosemite closed Mar. 20, 2020 at the request of the local health department, Great Smoky Mountains closed Mar. 24 and extended the closure Apr. 1 in response to North Carolina Executive Order 121, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island closed Mar. 16, Hoover Dam closed to all visitors Mar. 17, BLM Oregon closed every campground Apr. 1, the Forest Service closed all developed recreation sites in Oregon and Washington under 36 C.F.R. 261.50 closure orders by Mar. 31, and Corps of Engineers campgrounds were closed until a location-by-location reopening began May 21, 2020. NASA moved every center to Stage 3 mandatory telework Mar. 17 and Michoud and Stennis to Stage 4 closure Mar. 20; DOE Legacy Management visitor centers closed Mar. 16; the National Archives closed every research room and museum nationwide Mar. 14; the Library of Congress closed every building to the public Mar. 12 and extended the closure until further notice Mar. 26; the Census Bureau suspended all 2020 Census field operations Mar. 18 and pushed nonresponse follow-up to Aug. 9-Oct. 15, 2020. The Supreme Court closed its building to the public Mar. 12, postponed the March and April argument sessions (Mar. 16 and Apr. 3), heard argument by telephone in May 2020, and by order of Mar. 19, 2020 extended every certiorari deadline to 150 days; the Tax Court cancelled every trial session from Mar. 16 through June 30, 2020 (releases of Mar. 11, 13 and 23), closed its building to visitors Mar. 13 and entirely Mar. 18 (mail held until July 10, 2020), and by Administrative Order 2020-02 (May 29, 2020) made every proceeding remote until further notice; the Federal Circuit restricted access to the National Courts Building Mar. 16, 2020 and suspended all in-person argument (AO 2020-02, May 18, 2020). The Patent and Trademark Office waived petition fees for COVID-caused abandonments (Mar. 16, 2020) and, under CARES Act section 12004, extended patent and trademark deadlines falling Mar. 27-May 31, 2020 (notices of Mar. 31, Apr. 28 and May 27, 2020). NMFS issued an emergency rule under Magnuson-Stevens Act section 305(c) effective Mar. 24, 2020 authorizing waiver of mandatory observer coverage (85 Fed. Reg. 17285). The President delegated Defense Production Act authority over meat and poultry to the Secretary of Agriculture (EO 13917, Apr. 28, 2020) and USDA announced implementation the same day and letters to processors and governors on May 6, 2020. EPA's temporary enforcement-discretion policy ran retroactively from Mar. 13 to Aug. 31, 2020. 2020 Q3: parks reopened in phases with reservation systems (Yosemite from June 11 at roughly half of normal vehicle entries; Yellowstone's Montana entrances June 1; Great Smoky Mountains campgrounds and visitor centers June 8; Liberty Island grounds only July 20 with museums, pedestal and Ellis Island closed); the Tax Court, Supreme Court and Federal Circuit remained closed to the public with remote proceedings; NMFS extended the observer-waiver rule Sept. 21, 2020 through Mar. 26, 2021; Census field operations ran on the revised schedule to Oct. 15, 2020; the National Archives cancelled all public programs through Aug. 31, 2020. 2020 Q4 and 2021 Q1: the courts' closures and remote-proceeding orders continued (Tax Court hand delivery suspended again Oct. 30, 2020); Yosemite reimposed day-use reservations Feb. 8, 2021; NMFS revised the observer-waiver termination date to Mar. 26, 2022 (Mar. 29, 2021). 2021 Q2: the Federal Circuit's AO 2021-09 (effective May 24, 2021) kept the National Courts Building closed to the public with vaccination attestation for entrants; Yosemite's reservation system ran May 21-Sept. 30, 2021; the Tax Court remained remote and closed. 2021 Q3 (July 1-Sept. 30, 2021): in force on every day were the Tax Court's remote-proceedings regime (AO 2020-02 to Aug. 27, then AO 2021-01; the courthouse closed to the public until Oct. 12, 2021), the Federal Circuit's access restrictions (AO 2021-10, 2021-13 and 2021-14) with vaccination-or-mask protocols for in-person argument (June 22 and Aug. 12, 2021), the Supreme Court building's closure to the public (the July 19, 2021 order rescinded the filing orders but kept the 150-day deadline for pre-July 19 judgments and the single-copy rule to Sept. 1, 2021), the NMFS observer-waiver rule (to Mar. 26, 2022), Yosemite's day-use reservation requirement (to Sept. 30, 2021), and the federal-lands mask requirement under EO 13991 as reinstated by the NPS in August 2021 (documented here by the NPS public-health page and the Federal Circuit's Aug. 12, 2021 protocols; the August 2021 NPS text itself is pending retrieval).