State officials acknowledge that outdoor exercise — albeit with proper social distancing — is encouraged during the COVID-19 crisis.

Should that include golf courses?

That’s the subject of a lawsuit filed with the state Supreme Court by several businesses across the Commonwealth including two in Warren County — Blueberry Hill Golf Course and Caledonia Land Company.

Governor Tom Wolf and Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine have filed a brief via Attorney General Josh Shapiro and several deputy attorneys, in support of Wolf’s order to close non-life sustaining businesses as part of that ongoing litigation.

“So far, 42 states, including Pennsylvania, have shut down non-essential businesses as part of their effort to enforce social distancing, which is the only way to prevent millions of deaths from this pandemic,” they state.

The businesses “however, urge this Court to make Pennsylvania the first and only state in the country in which the effort to combat COVID-19 and protect the lives of its citizens must yield to the short-term commercial and personal interests of a few.”

The brief doesn’t hold back in their attack on the businesses’ arguments.

“When your neighbor’s house is burning down, though a burden, the law requires that you allow the fire engine to block your driveway for the protection of the entire neighborhood. A pandemic is burning across the world. The only effective tool we have to fight that fire is social distancing,” they note in one section.

In another, they claim the entities “plainly lack rudimentary understanding of this pandemic.”

“The Governor’s Order is a content neutral time, place, and manner restriction narrowly tailored to further the substantial government interest of arresting the continued spread of COVID-19,” they claim. “The health and survival of Pennsylvanians is the most compelling of government interests. And the classifications and distinctions made to protect the citizenry were absolutely essential — let alone reasonably related — to achieving that most compelling of interests.”

This is certainly an unprecedented time and Wolf and Levine argue that this “may be the direst emergency of our lifetimes.”

They assert the businesses’ “possessory interest in the uninhibited use of their buildings is heavily outweighed by the Commonwealth’s compelling interest in protecting the health and lives of its citizens.

“Both the United States Supreme Court and this Court have flatly rejected the absolutist view that individuals can trample the rights of society at large.”

Part of the challenge to Wolf’s order focused on the statutory grounds he claims to have acted on and whether the virus meets the definition of a disaster.

Wolf and Levine assert that positions “demonstrates an extraordinary level of myopathy about the effect this pandemic has had, and could have, on the citizens of the Commonwealth and our health care system if the spread of this disease is not arrested.

“The Entities’ argument rests on the premise that they have an unfettered right to operate their respective businesses, regardless of circumstance. This, they maintain, is a constitutionally protected property interest which has been impaired by the Governor’s Order. As detailed above, the Entities’ due process rights, like all rights, are not absolute.”