Flight attendants celebrated in the aisles and passengers cheered when a federal judge in Florida finally reined in the overreaching of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the seemingly perpetual mask mandate in airports, on planes and in other public transportation.
From the perspective of places in the United States where required masks were set aside in most public spaces months ago, it was odd to listen to pundits from New York and Washingtongive voice to fears that this would lead to calamitous health outcomes. “Whoops of Selfish Delight” read the headline of one Washington Post column.
Stranger still was the Biden administration’s decision to dig in and fight for the right to force Americans and corporations to keep masking, despite every political and cultural signal that people are over it.
Since Feb. 3, 2021, the CDC has required masks “while on conveyances and at transportation hubs” — an order that was put in place without regard to public notice and comment processes required under the Administrative Procedure Act.
We support the science that masks — worn properly and of the right type — are a way to slow the spread of disease. And there was a time before the development of a vaccine, and when COVID-19 variants were spreading dangerously, that public health benefited from broad masking. And we accepted that elected officials had the authority to require public masking.
But we also agree with U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s careful ruling that the CDC exceeded its authority in requiring masks as part of a broad expansion of its power over life and commerce during the pandemic.
Courts had already found that the CDC was outside of its authority in shutting down the cruise ship industry and stopping landlords from evicting tenants. The mask mandate stood as the last broad exercise of power that should properly fall to elected representatives.
Given the public reaction to the ruling, we would have expected the Biden administration to relent and let the mandate die. And there is at least one theory that the administration is doing just that by not immediately seeking a stay of the ruling. The New York Times reported Friday that some legal experts believe the administration is “giving up on the mask mandate.”
If that’s true — and it seems like a stretch — it is doubling down on bad politics by appealing Mizelle’s ruling. The administration has already run afoul of what looks to us like a substantial majority of the traveling public. Why court the political damage if you really want the mandate gone?
It seems more likely that the president and his advisers are devoted to continuing to defend the CDC’s overreach in the name of COVID-19 prevention.
— The Dallas Morning News via TNS
