PHOENIX — An Arizona appellate court has upheld a lower court’s decision to deny a request for medical records related to COVID-19.
J.D. Ball of Scottsdale represented himself in the case initially filed in Maricopa County Superior Court in 2020 against the Arizona Department of Health Services.
The agency had refused to provide Ball with documents he requested concerning the coronavirus outbreak. Ball argued he needed the information for a book he was writing about COVID-19 so he could “source the data” because he believed there “is no public health emergency in the state of Arizona.”
How big is Maricopa County?:
Maricopa County is the United States’ 4th largest county in terms of population with 4,485,414 people, according to the 2020 Census.
The county contains around 63% of Arizona’s population and is 9,224 square miles. That makes the county larger than seven U.S. states (Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New Hampshire).
One of the largest park systems in the nation is also located in Maricopa County. The county has an estimated 120,000 acres of open space parks that includes hundreds of miles of trails, nature centers and campgrounds.
The county’s seat is located in Phoenix, which is also the state capital and the census-designated 5th most populous city in the United States.
The county was named after the Maricopa, or Piipaash, Native American Tribe.
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