The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘We want parental choice’
Some families seek reprieve from children wearing masks in school
Brian Festa’s organization and a group of Connecticut families want children to have a choice about wearing masks in schools.
Festa, founder of the Ridgefield-based Connecticut Freedom Alliance, and four families have filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Education, seeking a reprieve from the mask requirement in schools.
“The answer is choice,”
Festa said. “We are not advocating that masks be banned. We want parental choice, leaving it up to the individual. Right now, the majority of parents would still do that.”
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, whose office is defending the lawsuit on behalf of the state, said masks are needed in schools to keep students and staff safe.
“By seeking to eliminate protections for students in school, this lawsuit puts children and educators at risk and makes us less safe,” Tong said in a statement. “Plaintiffs do not have a constitutional right to endanger their own children and put their classmates at risk. Overwhelming scientific and public health consensus is that masks effectively help prevent the spread of COVID — to deny that fact is wrong.”
After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially said during the early stages of the pandemic that only health care providers should wear masks, the agency issued guidance in early April calling for Americans to wear cloth masks while indoors or when they cannot stay 6 feet away from others.
The agency has continued to stress the importance of masks, hand-washing and social distance as the pandemic has killed more than 210,000 nationwide and more than 4,500 in Connecticut.
Cases have also been on the rise again in Connecticut, particularly in the southeastern portion of the state where a cluster of “red alert” communities are located. Municipalities fall into the red category if they have 15 confirmed positive cases of the coronavirus per 100,000 residents.
Last week, Paul Mounds, chief of staff for Gov. Ned Lamont, referenced the lawsuit during a press briefing while pointing out the rising number of cases was an opportunity for public officials to stress the importance of wearing masks.
“It’s quite ironic that we have individuals suing the state when it comes to wearing masks and don’t understand the importance of masks that has been said by the World Health Organization, the CDC, the state DPH and local health departments,” Mounds said. “We need people to wear masks and we need them to take this seriously.”
Festa’s group was formed in late 2019 as a way of advocating for “parental freedom and medical freedom,” he said. The group, which he said is mostly comprised of parents of school-age children, was also involved in protests against mandatory vaccinations for students.
The issue of whether children should wear masks at school all day is an extension of the group’s core values, Festa said.
“By and large, children are not affected by this virus,”
Festa said. “There is no evidence that they are dying from it unless they have serious co-morbidities.”
The lawsuit and Festa contend that children are being psychological and physically harmed by being required to wear masks at school. Members of the Connecticut Freedom Alliance claim their children have been suffering from a range of ailments related to the masks, including respiratory infections, skin problems, “kids passing out,” and headaches, “where as before they never had headaches,” Festa said.
The nearly 2,500-member group is seeking an emergency injunction striking down the mandatory mask rule for students attending school. A hearing on the emergency injunction was postponed last week as the sides tried to reach an agreement.
The first two medical experts that attorney Doug Dubitsky, a Republican state representative from the Windham County municipality of Chaplin, submitted to testify on behalf of the plaintiffs were disqualified by Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher based on their views or credentials.
One was an ophthalmologist who claimed to be widely read on the effectiveness of masks and the other was a medical doctor who thought the pandemic was a "hoax" and didn’t believe viruses existed.
That left the group scrambling to find other experts who will be vetted by the judge before they will be allowed to testify. One of the experts is a California-based child psychiatrist who was among hundreds of doctors who signed a letter in May to President Donald Trump, warning how virus-related shutdowns harm people’s health in terms of suicide, alcoholism and other problems.
Dubitsky has submitted 70 exhibits, totaling more than 800 pages encompassing studies that support their view.
The group has an issue with the “Adapt, Advance, Achieve” document the state Department of Education issued as guidance on how school systems should reopen this fall, Festa said.
“The whole process the Department of Education followed was wrong,” Festa said. “They issued the document with the guidance, saying that every school was required to do this. They had no comment or sought any parental input and there are no studies attached to the guidance.”
He’s fielded a “very substantial” number of complaints from parents about the policy, which is why the group filed a lawsuit.
“It was very clear that this was a major issue for a lot of parents,” he said. “Some people have said it’s just horrible. Looking at the science, there is nothing to substantiate that it works. Anytime there is a strong indication that kids would be harmed, we will likely be involved.”