Orange County Board of Schooling will sue Gov. Newsom over face masks – East Bay Occasions
The Orange County Board of Education alleged that wearing masks harms young children and announced Tuesday that it plans to sue Governor Gavin Newsom for an “unfair” state mandate for students to wear masks in classrooms this school year.
The board voted 4-0 to file the lawsuit during the closed session, then had an attorney read a press release saying Newsom had abused its authority by issuing health orders indefinitely in a state of emergency.
Last month, state officials ordered all students, teachers, staff and visitors to the school premises to wear face masks indoors for the coming school year.
“He has now abused that power to the point of causing serious harm to the Orange County’s children,” wrote board members.
Board members Mari Barke, Tim Shaw, Lisa Sparks and Ken Williams voted during a special session Tuesday to file the lawsuit, which had only one item on the agenda: litigation. Board member Beckie Gomez, who was present at the beginning of the meeting, left at 4:30 p.m. and was not present for the vote.
Barke, the chairman of the board, said after the meeting that with the schools reopening for the new school year, “children are our top priority”.
The Newsom office was not immediately available for comment.
Over the past month, case numbers have increased across the state and locally. On August 2, Orange County reported an average of 626 new COVID-19 cases per day for the past seven days, up from 72 new cases per day on July 2.
The elected board members have voiced their views against face masks in schools. But while the state said its masks-in-class mandate will be enforced by school districts, the education committee doesn’t oversee any of the county’s 27 districts.
The board not only said Newsom and officials from the state law enforcement agency were exceeding their powers with the mask mandate, but also questioned the validity of face masks.
“The lack of a solid medical or scientific basis for the governor’s obligation to mask schoolchildren (who are generally neither at risk from COVID-19, nor have the likelihood of spreading it), and also the lack of such a more careful, deliberate, and set aside.” Transparent weighing of the considerable damage of forced masking of young people against the alleged advantages, the governor and his executive bodies at the state level are not authorized to continue the state of emergency indefinitely and the Administrative Procedure Act to circumvent the usual requirements for the development of regulations of the authority. “
Numerous studies – including a global survey by the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year – have found that wearing masks slows the spread of COVID-19. And the federal centers for disease control are currently urging Americans to wear face masks, including in schools, to help slow the spread of COVID-19.
On Tuesday, board members did not provide evidence that face masks harm children. In the past, they have said that continued use of face masks affects students’ education as well as their emotional wellbeing. Children learning English and those with special needs especially need to see a teacher’s face, they said.
The order of masks in the class of the state added controversy during the pandemic, with some parents supporting the move and others saying it will harm their children. In Orange County this summer, at least three school councils – representing Capistrano, Placentia-Yorba Linda and Saddleback Unified school districts – voted for resolutions urging the state to relax mandates and make face masks optional.
The Orange County Board of Education is represented free of charge by Tyler & Bursch, a law firm with offices in Anaheim and Murrieta.
This would be the second pandemic-related lawsuit the board has filed against state officials.
Last August, the board filed a lawsuit against Newsom and state health officer Sonia Y. Angell seeking personal learning at a time when school campuses across California were closing due to the pandemic. That lawsuit went direct to the California Supreme Court, where justices asked Governor Newsom to respond to the board’s petition and a second related lawsuit. On September 9, the court refused to hear the case alleging that Newsom and Angell’s actions were unconstitutional and violated the right to equal access to education.
This lawsuit was also represented by Tyler & Bursch on a voluntary basis.
On July 22, two parenting groups – Let Them Breathe and Reopen California Schools – filed a lawsuit against Newsom and state health officials to end the school face mask mandate.
