By Rich McKay
ATLANTA (Reuters) - A Georgia judge on Thursday ordered the governor and Atlanta's mayor to enter mediation over the governor's lawsuit aimed at stopping the city from enforcing its requirement that people wear masks in public during the coronavirus pandemic.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Jane Barwick ordered Governor Brian Kemp and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to attend mediation with another judge and try to resolve the dispute before an emergency hearing scheduled in the case for Tuesday.
Earlier this month, Kemp, a Republican, barred local leaders from requiring people to wear masks. Even so, several Georgia cities, including Democratic-led Atlanta, Savannah and Athens, defied the governor's order and kept local mandates in place in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.
Bottoms told reporters that she and Kemp spoke by phone on the matter. "We are both in agreement that masks saves lives," she said. "Hopefully we can move past this."
The governor's office filed a lawsuit on July 16 against Bottoms and the Atlanta city council, arguing that local officials lack the legal authority to override Kemp's orders.
"Kemp must be allowed, as the chief executive of this state, to manage a public health emergency without Mayor Bottoms issuing void and unenforceable orders which only serve to confuse the public," the 16-page complaint read.
More than 4 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with the virus, including more than 150,000 cases in Georgia with more than 3,000 fatalities in the state.
Kemp has stood apart even from his Republican counterparts on the mask issue. More than half of all states have statewide mask mandates.