ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (AP) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has appealed a judge’s ruling that the governor exceeded his authority by ordering school boards not to impose strict mask requirements on students to combat the spread of coronavirus.
The governor’s lawyers took their case to Tallahassee District 1 Court of Appeals on Thursday. DeSantis wants the appeals court to reverse last week’s decision by Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper, which essentially gave Florida’s 67 school boards the power to impose a mask warrant. of student without parental consent. Cooper’s sentence was automatically stayed on appeal.
DeSantis, a Republican, said at a news conference earlier this week that he is confident the state will win on appeal by binding the mask’s warrant order to the Parent Rights Declaration Act. This law, the governor said, reserves to parents the authority to oversee the education and health of their children.
Cooper found, however, that the Bill of Rights law exempts government actions necessary to protect public health and that they have a reasonable and limited scope, such as masking students to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools.
“It doesn’t require a mask warrant to include a parental exclusion,” Cooper said in an oral ruling Friday.
DeSantis and state education officials have threatened to impose financial sanctions on school boards that adopt a mask requirement without a provision allowing parents to choose not to participate.
So far, they have moved to retain the salaries of school board members in Alachua and Broward counties. These are two of the 13 school boards that represent more than half of the 2.8 million Florida students who have voted for mask warrants challenging the governor’s order.
“Ultimately, we’re just trying to be with the parents,” DeSantis said. “We think it’s important to give them a chance not to participate.”
In his ruling last week, Cooper agreed with a group of parents who claimed in a lawsuit that DeSantis’ order is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. The problem has sparked intense, divisive school board meetings across the state, and pits parents who say masks are essential to the safety of children against those asking for orders to take them to government.
DeSantis has rejected the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that people wear masks. In particular, he argues that masks are less essential for young people and carry some risks of their own for children.
But Cooper said state medical experts who stated during the trial that masking is not effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19 are in a different minority among doctors and scientists. He also said that while DeSantis frequently states that a study from Brown University concluded that masks are not effective, the study authors wrote that no conclusions should be drawn.