- In dozens of cities and counties,
indoor mask mandates are back.
- Illinois will join several other states
that have reinstituted statewide indoor mask requirements,
regardless of vaccination status.
- And the reverse is also true.
Some places have enacted bans on mask mandates.
- There will be no mask mandate imposed.
- Either way, are these mandates technically legal?
- Mask mandates imposed on the state level are,
in fact, constitutional
because, going all the way back to a 1905 Supreme Court decision
and then subsequent court decisions
that have been in the same line, states and localities
have been given the right, according to the courts,
to impose mandates when it is in the public interest.
- Arguments that mask mandates
violate an individual's constitutional right to liberty
might not cut it with the Supreme Court.
That's because courts weight the government's interest
and protecting the health of its citizens
against an individual's civil liberties
when evaluating a state's action in a pandemic.
This goes back to 1905,
when the Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v.
Massachusetts that, under a state law,
local health authorities could compel adults
to receive the smallpox vaccine.
- Justice Harlan wrote
the majority opinion in the 1905 ruling,
and essentially he said that the Board of Health
had deemed vaccinations necessary
for controlling the smallpox epidemic
that was then going on in Cambridge.
And he said that it was necessary for the public health
and the public safety.
And those are the grounds on which he made the decision.
That court essentially established a precedent
that has never been reversed.
- Fast-forward to today.
Polling shows nearly two out of every three Americans
say they support their state or local government
requiring face coverings in public spaces.
Still, mask mandates are re-emerging
as the pandemic's latest cultural
and political flash point.
- No more masks! No more masks!
- Texas is one of at least seven states
that have enacted bans on mask mandates.
However, legal challenges have complicated
Governor Greg Abbott's efforts
to ban these mandates in schools.
- We have a saying in Texas --
"If you don't like the weather, stick around.
It'll change."
And these mask mandates debates are changing not on a weekly,
not on a daily, but an hourly basis.
- Some school districts have ignored
Abbott's mask mandate ban
or have found creative ways around it.
- Harris ISD really found a workaround for this.
They decided yesterday that they're requiring masks
to be part of the dress code
when their students head to school tomorrow.
- The varied responses from school districts
and local officials have made it difficult for the government
to enforce the mandate ban.
- You have so many different local jurisdictions
with so many different orders,
at least 50 school districts in 8 cities and counties
that you have to try almost every one of these cases.
You have to challenge every one of these local orders
in order to achieve uniformity.
And that's why the attorney general attempted
to get a blanket order out of the Supreme Court,
but the Supreme Court declined to give him
that blanket order prohibiting the mask mandates.
So I think you're just gonna play out
and it's gonna play out on a daily and hourly basis.
- Meanwhile, the Biden administration has signaled
its support for school districts requiring face coverings.
- I am directing the Secretary of Education,
an educator himself,
to take additional steps to protect our children.
This includes using all of his oversight authorities
and legal actions, if appropriate,
against governors who are trying to block and intimidate
local school officials and educators.
- The big takeaway is states and localities
do have the right to protect the public health.
And if the majority medical opinion
says that vaccinations and masks
are one way to protect the public health,
then localities in the states have every right to enact these.