It appears the parents failed to get a preliminary injunction in the case (in large part because they have not gone through the appropriate administartive steps prior to launching the case).
Skipping through the court's order, the position of at least one of the students was\is certainly problematic for their case:
Quote:
Some Plaintiffs are not sending their children to school despite that their
children’s school districts currently have a universal mask mandate in place. Todd Aff. ¶ 18;
Hayes Aff. ¶ 17; Kinder Aff. ¶ 9; Hr’g Tr. at 15:12–13 (“They may have other issues, but the mask
policy itself is not preventing them from going to school.”). Thus, Plaintiffs’ contention that an
injunction of Executive Order 21-175 would remedy the harms posed to Plaintiffs’ children is, in
large part, not borne out in the record.
Plaintiffs’ affidavits make clear that each child would benefit from individualized attention
to remedy the various headwinds imposed on their education by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus,
the Court finds that Plaintiffs would benefit more from the exhaustion of their administrative
remedies to reach individualized accommodations than the enjoining of Executive Order 21-175
(assuming an injunction would even have Plaintiffs’ desired effect, which is anything but
guaranteed).
A specific example makes this point clear. One of Plaintiffs’ children, J.T., underwent
brain surgery in June. Todd Aff. ¶ 7. J.T.’s parents have opted to keep him home from school,
despite his school district’s universal mask mandate, because students in his class were granted
medical opt-outs. Id. ¶ 18. In this circumstance, there is no harm to weigh one way or another.
The only path forward is for J.T. to seek an administrative solution that will provide him with the
best education possible under the circumstances. The Court can envision a solution for J.T. to
return to public schools, in person, under specialized circumstances that would promote his
maximum well-being. For example, J.T. could attend school in an environment that includes the
following: (1) specific classrooms with universal mask mandates, (2) outdoor lunchtime for
immunocompromised students, (3) specific classrooms with only vaccinated students—to the
extent they are available, (4) classrooms in which students partake in regularized COVID-19
testing, and (5) classrooms where there are no students with medical opt-outs from masking
policies. If a single classroom in J.T.’s school were to employ these provisions, it would allow
him, and other immunocompromised children, to substantially mitigate the risks posed by COVID-
19 and restore a semblance of normalcy to education. Enjoining Executive Order 21-175 will
simply have no impact at all, in J.T.’s case, because he cannot attend his school which currently
has universal mask mandate in place.
For this student, the school has a "mask mandate" in place, yet the student is still not attending because other students have medical exemptions and so do not wear masks... Should the student in the case win, this would lead to either the students with medical exemptions having to be forced to wear masks, harming them, or the situation remaining as it is at present, with the student still unable to attend the school...
The ruling is at
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.597646/gov.uscourts.flsd.597646.98.0.pdf for any interested in reading it.
07 Aug 2021, 9:27 am
