Unmasking the Mandates in Classrooms
September 2021 | Lauryn Shatzel, Staff Writer/Editor
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the way children learn in school. Public K-12 school districts have begun to impose mask mandates, which has angered some groups of parents. These parents have argued that school districts are infringing on their parental rights to determine how they medically take care of their children. As a response to this, some governors in states such as Florida, Texas, and South Carolina have created mask mandate bans to allow parents to have more freedom over their children's well-being in schools. There are three main groups that believe they have the legal authority to protect minors in schools: parents, school districts, and governors. Ultimately, this raises the question of which group has the legal power to make health decisions in public schools?
When the pandemic began, the United States was thrust into a position where the federal government chose to let states decide how to protect people from COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic, governors have been in charge of public health decisions at both the local and state levels. As such, this has become the new status quo, with some governors believing that they should maintain this authority and control how school districts manage the pandemic. [1] If governors can create mask mandates and ban mask mandates in places such as restaurants, then theoretically they could do the same in public schools. This would not be the first time that the government would get involved in public health matters. In Machovec v. Palm Beach County, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court Judge John S. Kastrenakes stated, “the right to be free from governmental intrusion does not automatically or completely shield an individual's conduct from regulation.”[2] Essentially, just because citizens are free from the government intervening in their private life does not mean that the government cannot regulate certain behaviors. Judge Kastrenakes cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), arguing that it permitted a local government to impose a vaccine mandate during a public emergency. [3] This belief of community safety over individual freedoms has been a responsibility of the government for over a century, and this current situation would be no different.
While governors do enforce mask mandates for restaurants and public indoor spaces, public K-12 schools encounter a different set of circumstances because of the relationship between minors and their parents. According to Florida statute §1014.03, the state “is not allowed to ‘infringe on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of a child ‘without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest.’”[4] This law is not only applicable in Florida, but it can serve as a model for the rights of parents in other states. Many parents do not want the federal government to make decisions that could potentially harm their children, regardless of whether it involves mask mandates or mask mandate bans. When governors create legislation to enforce policies that affect children’s health in schools, they can interfere with parental rights. According to Florida’s Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper, when the government seeks “to enforce a policy through executive order, and through actions that violate the provisions of the parents’ Bill of Rights, is by definition, arbitrary and capricious.”[5] In short, when the governor creates a mask or lack of mask-wearing legislation that purposefully goes against parental rights, that is an abuse of power. Ultimately, many parents believe that classroom mask mandates violate their rights and that the governor cannot make decisions in public schools that affect their child’s health.
While governors and parents are trying to dictate mask-wearing for minors in schools, public school districts want to establish mask mandates or mask mandate bans to enforce safety in their buildings. Judge Cooper further opined, “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… a school district’s decision to require student masking to prevent the spread of the virus falls within that exemption.”[6] If school districts believe that enforcing masks or enforcing people not to wear masks will create a healthier environment for minors during a pandemic, it is within the district's rights to do so. This, however, creates a natural conflict between school districts and parents.
The natural conflict ultimately leads to court cases with parents suing school districts. When looking at parental rights compared to the rights of school districts, courts must recognize, “that parents’ rights are not immune to some reasonable limitation depending upon safety and reasonableness and compelling state need regarding health care or condition of the child.”[7] Parental rights do not necessarily trump the responsibility of public schools to create a healthy and safe environment for learning, and this distinction would have to play out in court. These court cases are further complicated when state governors create executive orders that determine whether or not minors should wear masks in public schools. When Judge Cooper made a decision about Governor DeSantis’s mask mandate ban in schools, he ruled that the “Florida government didn’t actually have the authority to ban mask mandates under the parents’ bill of rights, because it gives school districts the ability to prove their rules are reasonable limitations on parents’ rights under due process rather than giving the state license to ban them entirely.”[8] By interfering with court cases involving school districts and parents, the government is interfering with the outcomes of existing court cases and not allowing school districts to defend themselves in court.
While each party claims to have responsibility for the health and safety of minors in public schools, it becomes less of an issue of public health and more of a courtroom issue. When governors create executive orders regarding mask bans or mandates, they are interfering with the legal process. Instead of making a consensus for state public schools, governors are ruining a good opportunity for parents and school districts to make a legal determination about what is a school district responsibility and what is a parental responsibility. The decision to put schoolchildren in masks cannot be a universal answer. It is important to look at how different courts analyze parental and school district rights during this pandemic. Even though these issues are prominent in states such as Texas and Florida, the same problems could arise in any state and school district across America. Each school district should make its own decisions, have parents be able to question these decisions in court, and ultimately have judges create the final answer on a case-by-case basis.
Sources
re Greg Abbott, No. 21-0720 (Tex. App - San Antonio [4th Dist.], 2021)
Machovec v. Palm Beach County, 11-12. (15th Cir 2020).
Ibid.
§1014.03, Fla. Stat. (2021)
Ceballos, Ana, and Jeffrey S. Solochek. 2021. “Judge Rules for Parents in Florida School Mask Case, A Blow to DeSantis.” Tampabay, August 27, 2021.
“Judge blocks Florida Governor's Order Banning Mask Mandates.” WCTV, August 27, 2021.
Ceballos, Ana, and Jeffrey S. Solochek. 2021. “Judge Rules for Parents in Florida School Mask Case, A Blow to DeSantis.” Tampabay, August 27, 2021.
Durkee, Alison. “Florida School Mask Mandate Ban Struck Down In Court.” Forbes, August 27, 2021.