ATLAS - Laws & Changes

It’s been a long road, and every road has an end point. We have reached ours.

Since 2015 we have been working to increase personal awareness of how rules, laws, and regulations are constantly shifting in ways that directly affect all of us so that we can be better informed, empowered, and make sure our voices have a chance to be heard on every issue instead of just those our leaders believe worthy of public discussion.

Despite broad recognition of how society needs what we do, the problem turned out to be bigger than our small team was able to tackle. The arrival of COVID-19 in the United States ironically both definitively showed the need for what we were trying to accomplish while also changing the game in a way that we couldn’t adapt to and still deliver the sort of high-quality personalized information we prided ourselves on making available.

We appreciate those of you who have reached out wanting access to the service we’ve been building, but unfortunately we’ve exhausted our ability to continue onward and have decided to shut down our operations.

For those participating in our beta testing, the mobile app will cease functioning on October 5th, 2020 when our web services will go offline. Our social media channels may continue posting content for a bit longer but will be updated far less frequently.

As we move out of April and into May, a major split is forming on how states and cities are responding to COVID-19.

Some states, most prominently South Dakota, took a much more restrained approach from the start. Other states that resisted imposing strict lockdowns early on, such as Georgia and South Carolina, are starting to reverse course – ending stay-home orders and allowing businesses to start reopening.

On the flip side, several states that adopted a more serious approach like Michigan and California have tightened some restrictions even further by shutting down previously open outdoor recreation sites and locales that generally lend themselves to maintaining social distancing by their nature.

Even within states we’re seeing splits. Colorado Governor Jared Polis allowed his state’s stay-home order to expire on April 26th, while Denver opted to extend local shelter-in-place requirements an additional two weeks.

There do not appear to be states and localities that resisted imposing restrictions changing course and adding new requirements. We aren’t seeing any *new* lockdowns or business closure mandates – many existing orders are being extended, but others are starting to expire without being renewed.