Judge to Government Oppression: No Mas
Public transportation ruling another blow to executive branch overreach; victory for due process and rule of law
Another judge has taken a cudgel to one party’s interpretation of “science.”
Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa declared unlawful the Biden administration’s Covid-19 mask mandate for public transportation. The ruling overturns the requirement that domestic travelers wear masks on airplanes, trains, taxis, buses and other forms of mass transit.
Mizelle justified the reversal by stating that the mandate exceeded the authority granted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under federal public-health law. Because the CDC used authority it did not possess, she wrote, “the court must hold unlawful and set aside the mask mandate as an agency action that is not in accordance with law.”
Almost instantaneously from when the ruling came down, social media was clogged with posts of travelers celebrating the announcement.
The off-with-the-masks transit dominos fell within hours – every airline and airport went “optional” along with Uber and Amtrak.
As it pertains to forced masking, mass transit was the last bastion of autocratic oversight. Schools, businesses, restaurants, all freed from government overreach in the previous months. Now the airlines.
One common catalyst freeing the entities – the courts.
In her ruling, this courageous judge in Florida echoed the arguments of others across the country when overturning unlawful mandates.
Judge Mizelle wrote Monday, “The Court concludes that the mask mandate exceeds the CDC’s statutory authority and violates the procedures required for agency rulemaking.”
Sound familiar?
In February, when the mask wars were at peak lunacy in Illinois, Sangamon County (Springfield) Judge Raylene Grischow issued a temporary restraining order overturning Governor J.B. Pritzker’s mask “mandate” and quarantine policies:
Grischow’s justification for rejecting Pritzker’s order:
The arbitrary method as to contact tracing and masking in general continue to raise fair questions as to the legality of the Executive Orders in light of violations of healthy children’s substantive due process rights. Statutory rights have attempted to be bypassed through the issuance of Executive Orders and Emergency Rules … This type of evil is exactly what the law was intended to constrain.
The Florida judge may not have written in her ruling how the Biden Administration denied citizens “due process,” but said as much when stating ‘the mask mandate exceeds the CDC’s statutory authority.’
That question of ‘statutory authority’ is what the legal actions in Illinois have been about; only in-state, swap the CDC with agencies Illinois Department of Public Health and Illinois State Board of Education.
Judges, in states all over the country, are re-claiming the power structure as first established in this country centuries ago: the rule of law supersedes orders by executive branch.
It’s another death blow to government treachery and a clear victory for citizen liberty.
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