Are stay-at-home orders 'laws,' as Jay Inslee said?

• Many stay-at-home orders have been issued in the form of executive orders or proclamations, including Inslee’s, making them different from a typical law that is passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.

• However, experts say executive orders, proclamations, and similar orders carry the same weight as legislature-passed laws, because they have been issued under the authority of existing legislature-passed laws.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who issued some of the earliest social-distancing orders of any governor to combat the spread of the coronavirus, took issue with President Donald Trump’s tweeted solidarity with protesters in several states who were demanding an end to stay-at-home orders.

On April 17, Trump tweeted, "LIBERATE MICHIGAN," "LIBERATE MINNESOTA," and "LIBERATE VIRGINIA," apparently referring to demonstrations at state capitols where protesters called for lifting restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus.

On the April 19 edition of ABC’s "This Week," host George Stephanopoulos asked Inslee, a Democrat, for his reaction to Trump’s tweets.

"We have an order from governors, both Republicans and Democrats, that basically are designed to protect people's health, literally their lives, (only) to have a president of the United States basically encourage insubordination, to encourage illegal activity. These orders actually are the law of these states. And, again, these are not just Democrats. These are Republican-led states as well. To have an American president to encourage people to violate the law, I can't remember any time during my time in America where we have seen such a thing."

We wondered whether it’s accurate to call state stay-at-home orders "laws," and whether they conflict with freedoms of speech and assembly under the First Amendment. So we asked legal experts.

They agreed that while most fall under the heading of "proclamations" or "executive orders," they were issued under legal authority delegated by legislatures, meaning that have the same practical effect. The orders also would have a good chance of being deemed constitutional in court, they said.

By now, most states have issued a stay-at-home order and/or requirements for business closures. (The National Governors Association has the complete list.)

However, most of these were not laws passed by the legislature and signed by the governor — the typical way of passing a state law. Instead, many of them have been made through executive orders, such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Illinois. Others have been made in the form of a "proclamation," such as the orders in Louisiana; a "directive," as was issued in Utah; or simply an "order," as in Idaho.

In Inslee’s case, he signed a proclamation establishing stay-at-home rules for Washington state.

A spokesman for Inslee said, however, that the proclamation was tantamount to a law, because it was made under authority delegated to the governor’s office by another law that had been passed the conventional way.

Inslee’s order was enacted under Washington’s emergency powers law, which authorizes him to "proclaim a state of emergency" and make a series of prohibitions pursuant to that emergency, such as "prohibiting . any person from being on the public streets."

Washington's Democratic governor, Jay Inslee, appeared on the April 19 edition of ABC's "This Week"

Experts told PolitiFact that despite the linguistic and procedural differences between orders and law, the stay-at-home orders effectively carry the force of law.