The courageous actions of one person sparked the total takedown of the illegal mask mandates and the miserable pseudo-science that was used to justify them in the first place. For all of the myriad doctors, medical professionals, business owners and citizens whose lives have been destroyed by illegal policies, their lives will never be the same. ⁃ Technocracy News Editor Patrick Wood
After more than two years of unscientific insanity, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle has finally voided1,2 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national mask mandate3 on airplanes and public transit. The lawsuit was brought by the Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF), which noted that “There are legal guardrails in place to protect our basic liberties and rights — even during a pandemic.”4 And, indeed, this was the message of the court as well.
The CDC had initially issued a “strong recommendation” to wear masks on planes and public transportation in October 2020,5 and then turned it into an “order” at the end of January 2021.6 As noted by Leslie Manookian with the HFDF:
“When flight attendants announced — repeatedly on each flight — that compliance is required ‘by federal law,’ did you ever wonder: what federal law? I did. And it led us at the Health Freedom Defense Fund to file suit against the mandate in federal court. With assistance from our lawyers at the Davillier Law Group, we learned there is no “federal law” compelling masks for travel.
The CDC does not have the statutory authority to issue a sweeping mandate requiring masking. Nor does the agency have the authority to penalize Americans for non-compliance.
The Biden administration claimed its mask mandate was rooted in authority granted under the Public Health Service Act. However, a careful reading of that law shows Congress never intended to grant such sweeping powers. In fact, the law is limited and specific …”
The CDC had extended its mask requirement as recently as April 13, 2022,7 despite pressure from airlines, the hospitality industry and Republican lawmakers to end it. The mandate was scheduled to expire May 3, 2022, but was lifted, “effective immediately,” April 18, 2022, following the court’s verdict.8 As reported by NBC Chicago:9
“The 59-page ruling10 from the Florida judge said the CDC failed to justify its decision and did not follow proper rulemaking procedures that left it fatally flawed.”
CDC Acted Unlawfully
In short, the mandate was unlawful because the CDC did not have the statutory authority to issue such a rule. The implementation of it also violated administrative law.
The fact that the CDC and White House have been doing what they know they cannot legally do says a lot about the state of our nation. Lawlessness reigns at the highest levels. As reported by CNN:11
“The first part of the judge’s 59-page ruling12 turned on the meaning of the word ‘sanitation,’ as it functions in the 1944 statute that gives the federal government the authority — in its efforts to combat communicable diseases — to issue regulations concerning ‘sanitation.’
Mizelle concluded that that the use of the word in the statute was limited to ‘measures that clean something.’ ‘Wearing a mask cleans nothing,’ she wrote. ‘At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitizes’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitizes’ the conveyance.’
She wrote that the mandate fell outside of the law because ‘the CDC required mask wearing as a measure to keep something clean — explaining that it limits the spread of COVID-19 through prevention, but never contending that it actively destroys or removes it.’
Mizelle suggested that the government’s implementation of the mandate — in which non-complying travelers are ‘forcibly removed from their airplane seats, denied board at the bus steps, and turned away at the train station doors; — was akin to ‘detention and quarantine,’ which are not contemplated in the section of the law in question …
‘As a result, the Mask Mandate is best understood not as sanitation, but as an exercise of the CDC’s power to conditionally release individuals to travel despite concerns that they may spread a communicable disease (and to detain or partially quarantine those who refuse),’ she wrote. ‘But the power to conditionally release and detain is ordinarily limited to individuals entering the United States from a foreign country.’
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