I believe there are now nine states where a Republican governor and/or legislature has tried to prohibit schools from enforcing mask mandates. To clarify, I am not aware of any state banning the usage of masks in schools. Some states prohibit schools from requiring face coverings, others require schools to respect the parents’ decision to have their child attend in-person without a mask.
According to Maricopa County Judge Randall Warner, new state laws become effective 90 days after the end of the legislative session, in this case September 29. Therefore he denied a biology teacher’s request to strike down Phoenix Union High School District’s mask mandate.
On August 17, Governor Ducey announced $163 million in federal funds will be made available as grants to Arizona schools that “follow all laws” (read: do not have mask mandates).
On August 18, President Biden issued a memo to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to crack down on such shenanigans involving federal money.
Governor Hutchinson has said (YouTube, August 3) he was not supportive of the law when he signed it.
"Auto-generated transcript (click to show/hide)
“Well I signed it at the time because our cases were at a very low point I knew that it would be overridden by the legislature if I didn’t sign it and I was not supportive of uh I’d already eliminated our statewide mass mandate and so uh you know I signed it for those reasons that our cases are at a low point everything has changed now and yes in hindsight I wish that had not become law but it is the law and the only chance we have is either to amend it or for the courts to say that it has an unconstitutional foundation”
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox issued a preliminary injunction against the law on August 6 (AP).
“Students may wear masks or facial coverings as a mitigation measure; however, the school must allow for a parent or legal guardian of the student to opt-out the student from wearing a face covering or mask.”
Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper overturned the ban on Friday, August 27. (2021 CA 001382: Robin McCarthy , et al v. Governor Ron DeSantis et al. [ruling not yet published]) (CBS Miami, NPR)
“No school district, or any of its schools, may use any funds appropriated or authorized pursuant to this act to require that its students and/or employees wear a facemask at any of its education facilities. This prohibition extends to the announcement or enforcement of any such policy.”
SC Supreme Court set to hear two cases about this provision tomorrow. (P&C)
A very confusing line of litigation. First State District Judge Catherine Mauzy of Travis County temporarily restrains the state from enforcing the ban on school mask mandates. The Texas Supreme Court declines to overturn that restraining order. But then the same Texas Supreme Court blocks mask mandates in San Antonio and Bexar Counties. (NBC). Governor Abbott says he has the power to enforce the ban, but in court filings A.G. Paxton claims it is up to local (often Democratic) DAs, who won’t enforce it. (Star Tribune)
Utah
Chapter ?, Laws of Utah 2021, First Special Session § 1-3 (May 28, 2021) [ed. note: Utah state session laws are behind a paywall of sorts, requiring a public library card. The enrolled bill, which should be identical, was HB1007. Or see the codified statute, Title 53G, Chapter 9, Part 2, sec. 210(5)]
These people are the ones who rant the loudest about wanting the pandemic to be over, yet they fight as hard as possible to keep the pandemic going as long as possible.
Masks? No.
Vaccine? No.
Distancing? No.
Then, may I ask as politely as possible, what is your f____ing plan to get this pandemic over with???
The story was, when covid was first in the horizon, Jared assured Trump it would mostly devastate big cities, NY, LA, SAN Fran, Washington, yknow big Democrat populations.
But in reality, this is clearly going to take out more Red state citizens, it seems.
The clever part about it is that since it’s not a “mask mandate”, it’s technically outside of the Governor’s executive order, and he’ll have an uphill fight to overturn it, as dress codes are left to the school districts, unlike mask mandates, which are something his order explicitly forbids.
A lot of the rest of the legal challenges to this center more around the Governor’s order being counter to the County Judges’ mandate to provide for public health and safety, and therefore invalid.
So the original impetus for this topic was to separate the school mask mandate politics from the Republican War on Voting topic. From that topic,
Whoever was standing in for Chris Cuomo two Fridays ago (8/20) on SXM POTUS went into this. At the time a new Axios/Ipsos poll came out showing most Americans support school mask mandates. The host & guest wondered why Republican governors would go against broad public opinion, and to be honest that’s something I wonder about too.
It’s not like Greg Abbott came to power with Trump. I don’t think his base == Trump’s base. He’s part of the old guard, having been appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Bush II in the '90s, serving as Texas AG under Rick Perry, and being governor since 2014 (pre-Trump). He’s up for re-election in 2022 and will probably face stiff competition, having only a 55.8% majority in 2018 and being thoroughly controversial today.
So my questions, in search of Gov. Abbott’s rationale, are:
Do the majority of Texans support school mask mandates?
Do the majority of Texas Republicans support school mask mandates?
Why, just why is Gov. Abbott doing this? What’s in it for him?
In the case of DeSantis we have at least the (admittedly conspiracy-esque) theory that one of his big political donors wants more people in the hospital because (s)he has a stake in some antibody treatment…
“Claiming that there is somehow ‘corruption’ by promoting the baseless political narrative that Governor DeSantis supports Regeneron over COVID vaccines (completely false, but that is another topic) is not even logically consistent when you examine the SEC filing,” [DeSantis spokesperson] Pushaw said in an email. “Citadel holds far more shares of Pfizer and Moderna than Regeneron.”
One reason: they want lots of people to die of covid while Biden is President so they can blame him.
If the Republicans go along with any measures that Biden (or Democrats in general) promote to get the virus under control, they will seem to be supporting him and that cannot be! If Biden wants to save lives, the Republicans must oppose him and promote death. It’s that simple.
I don’t think so. Back in the late winter and early spring months, even governors like DeSantis were touting vaccines. You’ll notice that none of these bans on school mask mandates came until after the vaccines were made available for the general public in the spring.
My point was, the vaccine rollout was nearly all while Biden was president. But Republican governors touted the vaccines, hard, at least before summertime. These bans on school mask mandates did not come into place as Biden took office, in time for the spring semester, but at the conclusion of the spring semester. It suggests that the Republicans are not merely acting to oppose Biden.
It’s a fair question to ask: do enough rural republicans die to hurt their chances at the ballot box in 2022? They’re already facing a demographic problem of not reproducing fast enough and dying off at a faster rate. This potentially stacks the demographic cards against them even more.
My take: back then it seemed like the country almost had this thing whupped, so why not get on the vaccination bandwagon. But with the Delta surge, and Afghanistan, and the escalation of shit that Biden has to deal with, the Pubs see this as The Perfect Storm to bring him down after stomping the Dems in the midterms.