In plain terms: some letters say that "order" must be given its ordinary meaning. Agreed. In ordinary usage an order is an authoritative direction with legal force: someone with power over the subject tells you what you must or must not do, and there is a consequence if you disobey. Every instrument in the Library is that. Each carries a command ("shall," "must," "is prohibited," "may not"), an issuer with authority over the commerce, travel or gathering it limited, and a sanction. Applied to the instruments, the ordinary meaning of "order" reaches the stay-at-home orders, the closure orders, the capacity and masking rules, the elective-procedure and visitation orders, the telework mandates, the traveler quarantines, the eviction moratoria, the Defense Production Act orders, the conveyance order, the entry proclamations, the occupational-safety standards, the vaccination mandates, the school orders, the court orders and the license conditions. The fourteenth ground, taken at its word, decides the question for the employer those orders reached.
"'Order' must be given its ordinary meaning."
Form language of the Service's letters and Forms 886-A on the suspension prong
Agreed
An order, in its ordinary meaning, is an authoritative direction with legal force. Every instrument in the Library is one: each carries an operative verb ("shall," "must," "is prohibited," "may not"), an issuing authority with power over the subject and a sanction. The Library records the operative clause of each in its own words and its enforcement provision beside it. The Suspension Clause adds one qualifier, that the orders come "from an appropriate governmental authority," and the District Court in Stenson Tamaddon, LLC v. IRS read "appropriate" to mean "fitting," so that the "fitting" governmental authority "would be the one having jurisdiction" over the operations the order reached.1
Applied
Applied to the instruments, the ordinary meaning of "order" reaches the stay-at-home orders of forty-two States and territories (Ex. LAW-201), the closure orders of every State, the capacity, masking and exposure-control orders of 2020 and 2021, the elective-procedure orders, the visitation bans, the telework mandates, the traveler quarantines, the eviction moratoria, the Defense Production Act orders, the conveyance order, the entry proclamations, the land-border prohibitions, the occupational-safety standards, the vaccination mandates, the school orders, the court orders and the license conditions inventoried in The Nation Under Orders, in the six quarters and in the twenty-seven industries. It reaches them because each is an authoritative direction with legal force from an authority with power over the commerce, travel or meeting it limited, and because the statute asks nothing more of it.2
On the ordinary meaning of "order," every instrument in the Library is an order, and the Service's fourteenth ground, taken at its word, decides the question in favor of the employer whose functions those instruments reached.
Take the letter at its word. For each instrument that reached your business, show the three things that make it an order in ordinary usage: the command (quote the operative clause), the authority (the governor, health officer, agency or court and the statute it acted under) and the consequence (the fine, the misdemeanor, the license suspension). The Library records all three for every instrument it publishes. An instrument with all three is an order in the ordinary sense, and the statute asks for nothing more.