Judge tosses out challenge to Las Vegas school masking mandate

Sam Metz
SF Gate
Thu, 23 Dec 2021 17:24 UTC

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey has ruled that Nevada parents have no say in rules affecting their school-age children.

A federal judge has refused to block the mask mandate imposed by school administrators in the Las Vegas area, dismissing a lawsuit that two parents filed claiming the requirement infringed on their right to make decisions for their kids.

In the lawsuit, the parents argued the mandates violated their right to make medical decisions for their children and argued against the process by which the Clark County School District adopted the policy.

The ruling comes as schools and businesses prepare for another variant-fueled surge and fights over coronavirus measures in schools continue to provoke spirited responses from parents and teachers on both sides of the issue.

© Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal

Protesters hold signs opposing the mask mandate for Clark County School District students on Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021, outside the Clark County School District Administrative Center, in Las Vegas.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey on Wednesday denied the parents' request for a preliminary injunction, saying that they didn't establish a viable legal basis for their lawsuit's challenge to the mandate for students and staff in the nation's fifth-largest school district.

"The Constitution does not require an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process for such broadly applicable policies, and the fundamental right to parent does not include the prerogative to dictate school health and safety policies," Dorsey wrote in a 22-page ruling.

Comment: Wait, what? The people have no say in policies which affect their daily lives?

The parents — who are represented by two attorneys running as Republicans for statewide office in 2022 — also argued they were left out of the process in which the district adopted the policies. They also alleged that masks caused physical and mental harm — including fogging glasses and impairing vision, increasing carbon dioxide levels and impeding their ability to connect emotionally.

Dorsey said the court did not have a basis to intervene in the district's decision, but noted that one of the articles cited challenging the efficacy of masks was written by a freelance writer out of Utah and another submitted by the plaintiffs concluded that an increase in carbon dioxide levels was "not physiologically significant."

In her ruling, she wrote that the parental rights enshrined by prior decisions have not been broad enough in scope to outweigh the interests of administrators in imposing a mask mandate. Administrators have long been allowed to make decisions in the interest of general welfare, health and safety, the ruling says.

The dismissal also notes that the parents' lawyers denied in court that there was a COVID-19 pandemic though it was acknowledged by the World Health Organization, the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said the decision ensured classrooms would be as safe as they can be and vowed to continue to defend health experts against "those who wish to peddle debunked, fear-mongering arguments in the court of law."

One of the parents' lawyers, Sigal Chattah, said on Twitter that the ruling would be appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Chattah is running for Ford's seat in next year's election. Joey Gilbert, the parent's other attorney, is running for governor.

Metz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Comment: Local paper Pahrump Valley Times reports:

Citing the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, plaintiffs argued that forcing their children to wear masks in school violated their rights as parents, including the right to make medical choices for their children, and said they were unconstitutionally excluded from "the decision-making medical process" behind the mask policies.

"But these perceived wrongs don't violate any constitutional rights," Dorsey wrote, noting that the Constitution "does not require an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process for such broadly applicable policies." Parents' rights, she said, do not "include the prerogative to dictate school health and safety policies."

Her 22-page ruling also dismisses plaintiffs' claim that there is no scientific evidence to support mask mandates, noting plaintiffs' counsel in court "denied the existence of a pandemic, though the World Health Organization, the White House, and the United States Supreme Court have all consistently acknowledged it."

Dorsey compared the state mask mandate to state laws on seat belt and helmet use, smoking bans, and shirt-and shoes-requirements in public places. She found similarities and precedents in the 1905 Massachusetts case, where the Supreme Court upheld the state's smallpox vaccine mandate, and in COVID-era mask mandate challenges arising in California and elsewhere that courts similarly rejected.

The prior rulings "compel the conclusion that the right to parent as one sees fit does not entitle parents to undermine local public-health efforts during a global pandemic by refusing to have their children comply with a school mask requirement, particularly when they've affirmatively chosen that option over the maskless, distance-learning alternative that (the Clark County Schools) also made available," Dorsey wrote.

So all the media attention as to the uselessness of masks is down the memory-hole. These people are morons. Or many they aren't?

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