Pritzker Takes The 'L': Media Whiffs On Story
Corporate-backed media fails to accurately report on governor's last gasp legal challenge to forced masking
While sipping on a dark roast Peet’s coffee Monday morning, I flipped on ABC-7 Morning News.
After a few minutes of weather and traffic, the anchor, Terrell Brown, got to the big local news story of the day.
Brown’s lede after a live report on the Monday lifting of the indoor mask mandate:
Governor Pritzker’s mask mandate for schools across Illinois has also been lifted.
Those words, and the accompanying graphic, shown above, got it all wrong.
‘Mandate ends?’ It was never Governor J.B. Pritzker’s to end.
The ‘mask mandate?’ Doesn’t exist.
But viewers wouldn’t know that if just watching corporate television news or reading newspaper headlines such as this one:
‘Mask optional if they wish?’ That implies districts need permission. They don’t.
Pritzker has a lot advantages in this state as he embarks on a re-election campaign. A Democratic-controlled legislature, sheepish opposition in Springfield and billion-dollar personal war chest. But he also has what amounts to a “state” media in the Chicago and suburban market.
Accurately covering events of the past few weeks leading up to Pritzker ending his unenforceable ‘mandate’ requires something heritage media outlets have shown impotence for – comprehension and analysis.
Friday’s announcement by the Illinois Supreme Court ended all debate about Pritzker’s authority as it pertains to forced masking.
By denying his request for leave of appeal, the governor takes the ‘L.’ He’s lost. It affirmed the 4th Appellate Court ruling eight days before.
“The real issue here is the governor’s involvement in this with the Supreme Court,” attorney Tom DeVore told The Kerr Report in an interview. “By refusing to take this, the appellate court says the governor’s involvement is moot to the extent that his executive orders are not bolstered by lawfully adopted emergency rules.”
A few weeks ago, when the JCAR committee in Springfield elected not to restore emergency rules of administrative agencies (for the Illinois Department of Public Health, for example), it effectively took away Pritzker’s authority to enforce executive orders on directives such as forced masking.
“With no emergency rules to support your executive order, your order means nothing,” DeVore said, “(Pritzker) is out of the picture.”
That’s the headline. The Appellate Court nor Supreme Court changed the law. What they agreed on is how “absent of lawfully adopted emergency rules” Pritzker has got nothing to support his ‘orders.’ He’s officially moot.
I used that headline (proudly coined the nickname ‘Governor Moot’) and written about Pritzker’s loosening grip on executive authority for months.
But I’ve taken the time to talk to experts and read up on case law. Institutional media outlets won’t do the same. They either don’t fully grasp the legal implications of these decisions or don’t care. Or both. Rather than think critically and offer analysis, it’s much easier to read a press release from the governor’s office, slap a misleading headline and hit send.
This headline from the Daily Herald makes it seem as though the governor won.
Wonder where the source material came from? Pritzker’s communications office:
Yes, the Temporary Restraining Order was vacated by the ISC as written in the statement. That is accurate. But it was done so as a necessary procedural move because Pritzker’s argument was rendered moot. For the statement to claim the governor holds onto authority in case ‘a mask mandate needs to go into effect in the future?’
That’s false.
Any press release touting how the ISC ruling is somehow a victory is nothing but political spin. Did anyone call out the hypocrisy from Pritzker’s communications team?
One outlet did.
The only other outlet I saw that got it right was the independent Wirepoints.
‘He was wrong on the law, wrong on the science behind masking and wrong on the politics…so he cut bait, trying to claim otherwise.’
Spot on.
Pritzker has cut bait. But only because the courts forced him to.
Friday’s ISC ruling removes Pritzker from the equation. But not all legal challenges.
In Judge Grischow’s initial Feb. 4 TRO ruling, she did barely addressed an issue that has come up throughout the action’s legal trajectory.
The issue of inherent authority.
What that means is this – what rights do school boards and administrators have in legislating their districts?
More specifically to the current climate, can a school board, independent of what’s written in the legal code, impose mitigations such as forced masking?
It appears they do not, based on decisions rendered in the lower courts and the reversal to mask optional status by almost every school district in the wake of February legal rulings. One large-unit Chicagoland superintendent raised the issue of inherent authority and due process at a board of education meeting last week:
Up next in the courts is expected to be a ruling by Grischow on the question of inherent authority.
“The TRO itself had very limited impact. The language was not clear as to what the districts could do,” DeVore said. “(It was done) in a round about way but not specific that school districts can’t do these things either.”
This explains the ongoing joinder action and imminent filing in Sangamon County Court, the case to be heard by Grischow.
DeVore said he plans to roll everything back into one big consolidated action as he did for the initial TRO last fall. Only this time, Pritzker will not longer be a defendant.
But don’t expect corporate-backed “state” media to cover it.
If they do, before hitting send, they’ll likely make just one phone call.
That’s to the governor’s office.