Judge blocks Florida governor’s order banning mask mandates

UNITED STATES (AP):

Florida school districts can legally require their students to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, a judge ruled Friday, saying Gov Ron DeSantis overstepped his authority when he issued an executive order banning such mandates.

Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper agreed with a group of parents who claimed in a lawsuit that DeSantis’ order is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. The governor’s order gave parents the sole right to decide if their child wears a mask at school.

Cooper said DeSantis’ order “is without legal authority”.

His decision came after a three-day virtual hearing, and after 10 Florida school boards voted to defy DeSantis and impose mask requirements with no parental opt-out. Districts that have done so include Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach, and others. Cooper’s ruling will not go into effect until it is put into writing, which the judge asked the parents’ lawyers to complete by Monday.

Cooper said that, while the governor and others have argued that a new Florida law gives parents the ultimate authority to oversee health issues for their children, it also exempts government actions that are needed to protect public health and are reasonable and limited in scope. He said a school district’s decision to require student masking to prevent the spread of the virus falls within that exemption.

The law “doesn’t ban mask mandates at all”, Cooper said during a two-hour hearing that was conducted online because of the resurgent pandemic. “It doesn’t require that a mask mandate must include a parental opt-out at all.”

The judge also noted that two Florida Supreme Court decisions from 1914 and 1939 found that individual rights are limited by their impact on the rights of others. For example, he said, adults have the right to drink alcohol but not to drive drunk, because that endangers others. There is a right to free speech, but not to harass or threaten others or yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, he said.

“We don’t have that right, because exercising the right in that way is harmful or potentially harmful to other people,” Cooper said. He added that the law “is full of examples of rights that are limited (when) the good of others ... would be adversely affected by those rights.”

ENDANGERING OTHERS

In that same vein, he said, school boards can reasonably argue that maskless students endanger the health of other students and teachers.

The highly contagious Delta variant led to an acceleration in cases around Florida and record high hospitalisations just as schools prepared to reopen classrooms this month. By mid-August, more than 21,000 new cases were being added per day, compared with about 8,500 a month earlier. Over the past week, new cases and hospitalisations have levelled off. There were 16,550 people hospitalised on Thursday, down from a record of above 17,000 last week – but still almost nine times the 1,800 who were hospitalised in June.

The 10 districts that have defied DeSantis’ order represent slightly more than half of the 2.8 million Florida public-school students enrolled this year. The governor, a Republican who is eyeing a possible presidential run in 2024, had threatened to impose financial penalties on school boards that voted for strict mask mandates. Democratic President Joe Biden said, if that happened, federal money would be used to cover any costs.

About six in 10 Americans say students and teachers should be required to wear face masks while in school, according to a poll conducted this month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.