Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has now been sued over his recent executive order aiming to block local school districts from imposing mandates to wear face masks. Specifically, the order threatened a withholding of state funding from schools that imposed such mandates, although certain school districts around the state have opted to impose some form of face mask-wearing guidelines anyway. Even Leon County Schools Superintendent Rocky Hanna — whose jurisdiction includes the Florida state capital of Tallahassee, where DeSantis works — announced this week that masks would be required in his jurisdiction when the school year begins.
Florida's Capital City and County @LeonSchools just mandated masks grades K-8th grade.
Thank you Superintendent Rocky Hanna.
— Nikki Fried (@NikkiFried) August 9, 2021
A report from a local CBS affiliate states that exceptions to the Leon County mask mandate will be allowed if students’ receive notes from doctors or psychiatrists outlining mental or physical health concerns calling for an exemption. The new lawsuit against DeSantis over his order targeting school mask mandates claims that his move “violates a provision of the state constitution that requires public officials to ensure schools are safe for students,” as explained by Bloomberg. The lawsuit — which has a group of parents as plaintiffs and seeks to block DeSantis’s order — states that DeSantis’s move “impairs the safe operation of schools,” adding that “[students] will become sick and potentially die as a result of the failure to follow the mandatory masking requirements” put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new lawsuit against DeSantis also insists that his order presents an “imminent and actual threat” to unvaccinated Florida students, many of whom aren’t even eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19 yet, since children under 12 have not yet been approved for such vaccinations in the United States. “Several of the parents who filed the suit have children with pre-existing conditions, such as asthma, that make them especially vulnerable to Covid,” Bloomberg notes. DeSantis has resisted taking COVID-19 more seriously, even as cases and hospitalizations — and, to a lesser but still present extent, deaths — have surged across Florida. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is a Democrat, shared on Monday that the latest numbers showed nearly 14,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations around the state, and Florida’s daily average of COVID-19 hospitalizations remains substantially higher than every other state in the nation.
2,836 Floridians are in ICU beds right now fighting COVID-19, as reported by 257 hospitals to @HHSGov.
88.85% of all Florida ICU beds are in use, 257 hospitals reporting. 44.76% are being used for COVID-19 patients, 251 hospitals reporting.
Get vaccinated. Stay well.
— Nikki Fried (@NikkiFried) August 9, 2021
