Pennsylvania K-12 Mask Mandate Thrown Out By State Court

by CrownHeights.info

Pennsylvania has become the next state to see their child mask mandate thrown out in court as a panel of Judges ruled that Pennsylvania’s acting health secretary lacked the authority to make such a mandate.

The courts 4-1 decision was made in a lawsuit led by the ranking Republican in the state Senate and others challenging a mandate made by Pennsylvania’s Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam that mandated masks in schools for children in K-12.

According to an opinion in the ruling, the Health Secretary does not hold “the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures.”

In the opinion, the judge wrote that “express herein no opinion regarding the science or efficacy of mask-wearing or the politics underlying the considerable controversy the subject continues to engender.”

Following the ruling, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said he would give the local school districts the discretion for future masking requirements.