The interconnected economy and the broken leg
This industry sells its labor into every other industry and into government, transacts through courts and public offices, hires through examinations and consulates, and moves its people through transit, airports and borders. An order on any of those is an order limiting commerce, travel or group meetings, and an operation of this industry delayed, interrupted or terminated because of it is suspended due to it. The orders of 2020 and the first half of 2021 compelled this industry to dismantle its operation; the orders' own reopening steps show that the restoration ran into and through the third quarter of 2021; and the clause's grammar, Tri-State's definition and the Notice's own words make the continuing suspension a suspension "during the calendar quarter."
The mechanisms
Six mechanisms carried orders addressed to others into this industry's operation. Supply chain and borders: the land-border restrictions, the entry proclamations, the Title 42 order and the inbound-testing order closed the cross-border movement of the industry's customers, specialists and counsel.135 Workforce, schools and child care: the school closures of the spring of 2020, the FFCRA leave mandate through December 31, 2020, the State paid-leave mandates and the quarantine orders removed the industry's staff from its offices by law.136 Travel and gatherings: the interstate quarantines of New York, Connecticut, Hawaii and others, the DOT minimum-service orders and the gathering limits of every State ended the conference and customer-travel calendar on which business development runs (the meetings table on this page).137 Courts and public offices: the orders inventoried in the orders-by-layer section converted or closed the venues in which the industry's work becomes effective.138 Transit: the CDC conveyance order, the TSA directives and the transit agencies' rules conditioned every commute from February 1, 2021.139 Health care as counterparty: the health-care-worker vaccination orders of California, New York, New York City, Philadelphia and Denver from July 26, 2021 conditioned the industry's on-site work in hospitals and clinics.140
Counterparty orders as orders
The statute's object is "commerce, travel, or group meetings," not the employer's premises. The Notice's Q&A-12 applies the clause exactly so, making an employer eligible "because its operations have been suspended due to the governmental order that suspended operations of its supplier," and the United States told the Ninth Circuit that "a business may be suspended 'due to' a government order addressing a third party."141 The supplier of a law firm is the court; the supplier of an auditor is the customer's plant; the supplier of a consultancy is the customer's office; the supplier of a technology firm is the consulate that issues its engineers' visas. Each was closed or conditioned by order, and the operations that depended on it were suspended in part because of the order in the only sense the statute uses.
The textual point
The clause reads "is fully or partially suspended during the calendar quarter due to orders." The phrase "during the calendar quarter" modifies "suspended"; it asks whether the suspension existed at any time in the quarter, not whether an order was issued in or addressed to the quarter. Congress did not write "orders in effect during the calendar quarter."142 Tri-State holds that a suspension includes a "delay" and that causation is but-for.143 The Notice recognizes both propositions: Q&A-22 makes an employer whose suspension ends in the middle of a quarter eligible for the whole quarter, and Q&A-16 treats the time an employer needs to move between modes of operation as part of the suspension where the delay exceeds two weeks.144 An operation ordered to zero on March 22, 2020, permitted twenty-five percent in May, fifty percent in June, cut again in December, and permitted one hundred percent only in June 2021 was delayed by those orders on every day between, and the delay did not end on the day the last cap lifted.
The restoration arithmetic for this industry
What the orders compelled this industry to dismantle is recorded in the orders themselves. Offices: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and the other closure States ordered in-person office work to zero between March 19 and March 25, 2020; the reopening orders permitted twenty-five and then fifty percent between May 11 and June 22, 2020, then cut occupancy again to ten percent (Colorado, November 20), twenty-five percent (Massachusetts, December 26; Washington, November 17; Nevada, November 24) or zero (California, December 5; Pennsylvania's "unless impossible," November 27; Michigan's prohibition on in-person work, October 14), and lifted the caps and mandates between April 4, 2021 (Pennsylvania) and June 30, 2021 (Oregon and Washington), with New Mexico on July 1.145 Courts: Delaware empaneled no jury between November 16, 2020 and June 1, 2021; Cook County held no jury trials from March 13, 2020 to its spring 2021 target dates; Maryland resumed jury trials on April 26, 2021; the Tax Court held no in-person session in the period; the trial calendars of the third quarter of 2021 were the backlogs those orders made.146 Licensure: the July 2020 bar examination was cancelled, postponed or replaced in most jurisdictions, and the February and July 2021 examinations were remote in forty-one and thirty jurisdictions, with admissions following months later.147 Visas: H-1B and L-1 entry was suspended from June 24, 2020 to March 31, 2021, and routine consular services were restored post by post through 2021; the specialists on whom information-services and consulting firms depend were not in the country on July 1, 2021 and could not be brought in during the quarter at any pace the firms controlled.148 An employer whose operation was ordered suspended through June 30 was not walking normally on July 1, and the orders' own step dates fix the arithmetic.
What was still in force when the general restrictions ended
When the last office caps lifted in June 2021, the following remained in force and are relied on as the orders they are: the federal workplace and contractor orders; the CDC conveyance order and TSA directives; the entry proclamations, land-border notices, Title 42 order and inbound-testing order; the State workplace standards of Virginia, California, Oregon and Washington and, from August 5 and September 6, 2021, the New York HERO Act plans and activation; the court orders of the United States and of at least twenty-nine States; the emergency declarations of twenty-five States on September 21, 2021; the metro face-covering, exposure-control, vaccination and court orders of July through September 2021; the school face-covering and quarantine orders of the autumn, airborne-transmission and exclusion controls on the workforce's children; and the notarial and licensing regimes of eight States.149 The six-quarters section states them with dates. They are not the residue of a suspension; they are orders limiting commerce, travel and group meetings in force during the calendar quarter.