LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) — The owners of a small-town Michigan gym won’t get their day in the nation’s highest court after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear their lawsuit over Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s 2020 shutdown orders.

COVID lockouts and workouts.

The Gym 24/7 Fitness, owned by Randy Clark and Yvette Franco-Clark, was closed for six months under Whitmer’s COVID-19 restrictions. The couple sued in 2020, arguing the shutdown resulted in “an unconstitutional taking” of private property and that the state owed compensation.

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According to their legal filing, the closure “halted all economic activity and use of the fitness centers” and “produced very nearly the same effect for constitutional purposes as appropriating or destroying the property as a whole.”

Specifically, the Clarks’ brief argued that “when the government takes property for a public purpose, the state and federal constitutions require the payment of just compensation.”

The end of a four-year legal fight.

The state Court of Claims let the case proceed, saying the governor’s office had not shown the closure was necessary. The Court of Appeals, however, reversed that decision in 2022, ruling that Whitmer’s actions fell under the state’s police powers during an emergency. 

“The government is not required to compensate individual property owners every time it takes action that adversely affects property interests,” the court ruled.

The Michigan Supreme Court then declined to take the case, and on June 2, the U.S. Supreme Court did the same — without comment. 

The high court’s refusal effectively ends the Clarks’ four-year legal fight.