Fla. ban on mask rules for schools overturned
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — 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 Mr. 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.
Judge Cooper said Mr. DeSantis’ order “is without legal authority.”
His decision came after a fourday virtual hearing, and after 10 Florida school boards voted to defy Mr. 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. Judge 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.
Judge 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,” Judge 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 theater, he said.
In that same vein, he said, school boards can reasonably argue that maskless students endanger the health of other students and teachers.
Mr. DeSantis has dismissed the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people wear masks, questioning its legitimacy and saying it is not applicable to Florida. But Judge Cooper said the state’s medical experts who testified during the trial that masking is ineffective in preventing COVID-19’s spread are in a distinct minority among doctors and scientists.