A Voice Rises Above The Noise
Vernon Hills student and basketball player challenges school board and administration on forced masking, leads with words and actions
Sitting in the stands at Vernon Hills High School Tuesday night, Steve St. Louis was there to watch his son, Justin, play a basketball game.
Justin is a senior guard for the Cougars boy’s team. A tough defender with a quick first step, Justin made the Northern Lake County All-Conference team this season.
Taking charges and knocking down jumpers is how Justin helps his basketball team win.
Off the court, Justin is also gaining notoriety. Only he’s using an entirely different skill set. His voice. And the courage needed to act on his ideas.
“I’m really proud of him for stepping up in an uncomfortable situation,” Steve St. Louis said. “Knowing how important it is for his dad being a (military) veteran, for us to stand up for our rights.”
Watching the video, it’s not the face on the screen that draws viewers in, but the voice off-camera.
Loud, emphatic; yet in tone, articulate, sensible and rational.
Listen for yourself:
The speaker, Justin St. Louis, spoke these words while being locked in a gymnasium with his peers by Vernon Hills High School administrators on Feb. 9.
That day, school officials refused to allow unmasked students to sit in class for in-person learning. This came days after a Sangamon County judge ruled against Governor J.B Pritzker’s school mask mandate, saying it denied students and staff “due process.”
St. Louis, a named plaintiff in the TRO and thus granted relief from forced masking, sat in solidarity with his fellow classmates that day, most of whom were not plaintiffs in the legal action.
(School administrators refused to recognize the court’s ruling for anyone not named as plaintiffs in the TRO injunction.)
When granted an audience by school principal Jon Guillaume, he seized the opportunity.
“I feel pretty confident in a public speaking setting and have a decent voice for it,” St. Louis said.
It wasn’t until after the Feb. 4 TRO ruling when St. Louis began to inject himself more into the forced masking debate.
A week of ‘walk in’ rallies at the school beginning Feb. 7 gave St. Louis the platform to express what many of his classmates believe but aren’t comfortable saying out loud – that continued forced masking by school districts is not only unlawful, but immoral.
“I had stayed silent but got to the point when I decided to assert myself as a leader for something that I wanted to get done,” St. Louis said. “I felt like I was the most equipped with the knowledge of what to say.”
Monday, at a District 128 board of education meeting (Vernon Hills is part of the D128 along with Libertyville High School) at LHS, St. Louis, along with his father, Steve, attended the meeting in person.
During the public comment portion, Justin St. Louis confidently strode down the aisle towards the podium.
One of the masked D128 school board members asked St. Louis “to please put his mask on.”
Confronted, St. Louis didn’t hesitate . He had the truth, and law, on his side.
St. Louis replied, ”I do not have to as I’m a plaintiff listed in the case.”
The crowed in the auditorium erupted in applause for 15 straight seconds.
(You can screen the full :54 second video here)
The back and forth between St. Louis and the school board member, who insisted he put on a mask, ended in a called recess by flummoxed administrators.
“I know my rights and what the judge said is they can’t legally mask me in the building and if they let me speak I will speak my mind,” St. Louis said. “If they didn’t, I would threaten them with contempt. I did just that.”
The virility of the video was instant, its symbolism made for a Hollywood screenplay – a red-headed high school student standing up to a big, bad school board member hiding behind a desk and face muzzle – and marked yet another crucible moment in the absurdity of the mask wars.
School districts like D128 – insisting the state remains under a masking emergency order when the courts and legislature now strip away any legal basis for such autocratic policies – either show blatant disregard of the rule of law or cognitive dissidence by continuing to enforce such guidelines.
And with their actions, board members and administrators are now at risk of being hauled in front of a judge.
St. Louis arrived at the gym before a Feb. 9 home basketball game believing he would play without a mask.
But Vernon Hills Athletic Director Brian McDonald had other ideas, insisting St. Louis wear a mask. If not, he would be forbidden from playing.
McDonald had a different interpretation of the Feb. 4 TRO ruling that gave St. Louis, as a named plaintiff in the action, permission to be on school grounds maskless.
“They first started telling me that it was school hours and the order clearly says ‘in the building,’” Steve St. Louis said, Justin’s father. “It doesn’t say anything about ‘school hours.’ It clearly states ‘in the building.’
Here’s the exact wording in the motion ruling from Judge Grischow, stating, as it pertains to plaintiffs, “defendants are temporarily restrained from”:
Ordering school districts require the use of masks for students and teachers who occupy their buildings, if they object, except during the terms of lawful order of quarantine issued from their respective health department, in accordance with the IDPH Act
McDonald either didn’t read the ruling himself, or more likely, was told by his bosses what to do. But by forcing Justin St. Louis to play the game with a mask, he was endangering himself to a charge of contempt.
“You are telling me you are enforcing rules against children against a court order?” Steve St. Louis said. “I showed him (a copy of the TRO) but he said (Justin) had to wear a mask.”
Steve St. Louis immediately called his lawyer, Tom DeVore.
DeVore filed a motion of contempt against McDonald and the district, stating in the court filing, “both have willfully refused to comply with this Court’s Order.” The motion was granted Monday within an hour of the judge receiving it, according to St. Louis.
As a result, on Feb. 25 in Sangamon County, McDonald and a member of the D128 board are ordered to appear in front of a judge on contempt charges stemming from the Feb. 9 incident.
Steve St. Louis sees the circumstance as the latest example of school officials flaunting authority they don’t have.
“I’ve been telling everyone all along these things are unlawful and I’m tired of just falling in line and not standing up for these kids and our freedoms,” he said. “The leaders in these positions, it seems all we have are followers continuing with the same narrative of whatever they are told above for whatever reason, just fall in the ranks and do what you’re told.
“Right now in America we need a different voice. We need people to stand up.”
Tuesday night, eight Cougar senior basketball players lined up in a hallway outside the school’s main gymnasium.
Senior night ceremonies preceded the game against Glenbrook North.
Justin St. Louis, the team’s starting guard, stood with his parents, Steve and Susan. All three were maskless, their smiling faces standing out from muzzled teammates, moms and dads.
There, in that moment, dressed in his basketball uniform, about to play his final regular season home game as a high school athlete, Justin St. Louis took on a normalized teenage existence.
Away from basketball, nothing from the past few weeks have been normal for St. Louis. But he’s said he’s just fine with that and is ready to embrace whatever calling comes next.
“If there is a central voice behind a movement, someone standing up, they are more confident to follow that leader. I feel like I could fit that role pretty good,” St. Louis said.
In the video from the Monday school board meeting, while the audience erupted, Justin St. Louis turns to his right, as if amazed by the supportive cheers around him.
“I was not expecting that. That felt good. It felt like a little bit of an accomplishment (to get the recess),” St. Louis said. “It always feels good when you have backing and keeps me moving forward and keep presenting what we want.”
Right after his comment at the Monday meeting, after he reminded the school board member of the rule of law, after the stirring ovation from the audience in the auditorium, St. Louis received a phone call.
He picked up. His basketball coach, Matt McCarty was on the other line.
“Coach called during the board meeting to say I made all-conference,” St. Louis said.
In a week’s worth of smiles, that may have brought the widest one across the face of Justin St. Louis.
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Thanks for reading!
Great story. Thank you!