Getting around &/| operator errors in optimization toolbox

I've got a variable (ER) defined as follows:

ER =      XO <= -(Lx-wx)/2 & YO <= -(Ly-wy)/2;    % Bottom-left feature of unit cell
ER = ER | XO >= +(Lx-wx)/2 & YO <= -(Ly-wy)/2;    % Bottom-right feature of unit cell
ER = ER | XO <= -(Lx-wx)/2 & YO >= +(Ly-wy)/2;    % Top-left feature of unit cell
ER = ER | XO >= +(Lx-wx)/2 & YO >= +(Ly-wy)/2;    % Top-right feature of unit cell

Here XO and YO are x/y axis meshgrids that range from -Lx/2 to Lx/2 and -Ly/2 to Ly/2 . Lx/Ly are spacings between features and wx/wy are widths of the features. Essentially ER here is getting filled with 1s if its position corresponds to a feature and 0s if not in a meshgrid. For example, with random values for Lx/Ly and wx/wy an image of it shows this:

My issue is that once I change Lx/Ly and wx/wy to optimvars they toolbox doesn't like the &/| operators and throws this error:

Operator '&' is not supported for operands of type 'optim.problemdef.OptimizationInequality'.

Is anyone aware of a way to get the same effect of the code shown without using &/|? I'm sure its something super simple I'm overlooking but I've been staring at a blinking cursor for way too long trying to figure it out. If its something that is fixed in later releases I have no issue updating it.