FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Florida school districts can legally require their students to wear masks to prevent the spread of covid-19, a judge ruled Friday, saying Gov. Ron DeSantis overstepped his authority when he issued an executive order banning such mandates.
Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper agreed with a group of parents who claimed in a lawsuit that DeSantis' order is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. The governor's order gave parents the sole right to decide if their children wear masks at school.
Cooper said DeSantis' order "is without legal authority."
His decision came after a four-day hearing, and after 10 Florida school boards voted to defy DeSantis and impose mask requirements with no parental opt-out. Districts that have done so include Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville and West Palm Beach. Cooper's ruling will not take effect until it is put into writing, which the judge asked the parents' lawyers to complete by Monday.
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Cooper said that while the governor and others have argued that a new Florida law gives parents the ultimate authority to oversee health issues for their children, it also exempts government actions that are needed to protect public health, and are reasonable and limited in scope. He said a school district's decision to require student masking to prevent the spread of the virus falls within that exemption.
The law "doesn't ban mask mandates at all," Cooper said during a two-hour hearing that was conducted online because of the resurgent pandemic. "It doesn't require that a mask mandate must include a parental opt-out at all."
The judge also noted that two Florida Supreme Court decisions from 1914 and 1939 found that individual rights are limited by their impact on the rights of others. For example, he said, adults have the right to drink alcohol but not to drive drunk, because that endangers others. There is a right to free speech, but not to harass or threaten others or yell "fire" in a crowded theater, he said.
In that same vein, he said, school boards can reasonably argue that maskless students endanger the health of other students and teachers.
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DeSantis has dismissed the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people wear masks, questioning its legitimacy and saying it is not applicable to Florida. But Cooper said the state's medical experts who testified during the trial that masking is ineffective in preventing covid-19's spread are in a distinct minority among doctors and scientists.
He also said that while DeSantis frequently states that a Brown University study concluded that masks are ineffective, the study's authors wrote that no such conclusion should be drawn.
"I don't say that the governor has time enough to read a report that thick, but his advisers do ... and that statement is incorrect," Cooper said.
The governor's office said Friday that the decision wasn't based on the law and the state will appeal.
"It's not surprising that Judge Cooper would rule against parents' rights and their ability to make the best educational and medical decisions for their family, but instead rule in favor of elected politicians," spokeswoman Taryn Fenske said in a statement. "This ruling was made with incoherent justifications, not based in science and facts -- frankly not even remotely focused on the merits of the case presented."
Craig Whisenhunt, one of the attorneys representing the parents, called DeSantis' actions in the case "atrocious" and called him "a bully in the room that is beating up children."
"The path that he took showed evidence of some cowardice," he said. If DeSantis really believed the parental rights law barred districts from imposing mask mandates, he wouldn't have issued an executive order -- he would have taken the districts to court and gotten a judge to block them, Whisenhunt said.
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One of the parents who sued the state, Amy Nell of the Tampa area, said that when Cooper ruled, "I really felt heard for the first time in a while."
"Since the beginning of the school year it has felt like bizarro world. We are being told that science -- what we think it is and everything we know about viruses -- may be not true," Nell said.
HURRICANE FEARS
About 1,100 people are dying daily of covid-19 in the United States, the most since mid-March, according to Johns Hopkins University data. About 85,000 people were hospitalized with the illness nationwide early this week, CDC data show, the highest total since the post-holiday surge in early February.
The surge is largely fueled by the highly contagious delta variant among people who are not vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Gulf Coast hospitals already full of unvaccinated patients braced for the nightmare scenario of a hurricane and not enough staffing to treat the injured.
However, U.S. officials offered new hope for the safety of schoolchildren Friday. The Biden administration said half of U.S. adolescents ages 12-17 had gotten at least their first shots and the inoculation rate among teens is growing faster than in any other age group.
"We have now hit a major milestone," White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters at a briefing. "This is critical progress as millions of kids head back to school."
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New studies from California provided more evidence that schools can open safely if they do the right things, and highlighted the danger of failing to follow proper precautions.
A study of cases from the winter pandemic peak in Los Angeles County found that case rates among children and adolescents were about 3½ times lower than in the general community when schools followed federal guidance on mask wearing, physical distancing, testing and other measures, officials said.
Another study from Marin County, north of San Francisco, found that a single unvaccinated teacher who returned to school two days after showing symptoms and read to her class without wearing a mask led to 26 other infections in May, before the highly contagious delta variant ran wild.
"Most of the places where we are seeing surges and outbreaks are in places that are not implementing our current guidance," said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, who discussed the studies at a briefing.
More than 3,100 active coronavirus cases have been reported in Arkansas public schools among students and employees, according to newly released numbers, and most youths are enrolled in districts that require masks. The mandates emerged after a judge temporarily blocked a state law that banned mask mandates in Arkansas, which ranks fifth nationally in the number of new virus cases per capita, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
On the northern Gulf Coast, where Ida was forecast to become a hurricane before it hits Sunday, workers at Singing River Gulfport in Mississippi expect to have to raise flood gates to keep rising water out of the hospital that is full of covid-19 patients, the vast majority of whom aren't vaccinated, said facilities director Randall Cobb.
Complicating matters, he said, is that the hospital is short-staffed because of the pandemic and expects to get a flood of patients suffering from conditions that typically follow any hurricane: broken bones, heart attacks, breathing problems and lacerations.
"It's going to be bad. It's going to be really bad," Cobb said.
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Just a few miles from the coast, the hospital has enough generator fuel, food and other supplies to operate on its own for at least 96 hours, he said, and it will help anyone who has a serious, life-threatening condition. But officials were trying to get the word out that people with less-severe medical problems should go to special-needs storm shelters or contact emergency management.
"It's very stressful because it's too late if we have not thought of everything. Patients are counting on the medical care but also on the facility to be available," Cobb said.
In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards said evacuation of hospitals in threatened areas is impractical with covid-19 patients.
"That isn't possible. We don't have any place to bring those patients. Not in state, not out of state," Edwards said, adding that state officials have worked with health systems to ensure they are prepared.
FALSE CLAIMS
Standing before a local school board in Indiana this month, Dr. Daniel Stock issued a litany of false claims about the coronavirus. He proclaimed that the recent surge in cases showed that the vaccines are ineffective, that people are better off with a cocktail of drugs and supplements to prevent hospitalization, and that masks do not help.
His appearance has since become one of the most-viewed videos of coronavirus misinformation. The videos -- several versions are available online -- have amassed nearly 100 million likes and shares on Facebook, 6.2 million views on Twitter, at least 2.8 million views on YouTube and more than 940,000 video views on Instagram.
His talk's popularity points to one of the more striking paradoxes of the pandemic. Even as many doctors fight to save the lives of people sick with covid-19, a tiny number of their peers have had an outsize influence at propelling false and misleading information about the virus and vaccines.
Now there is a growing call among medical groups to discipline physicians spreading incorrect information. The Federation of State Medical Boards, which represents the groups that license and discipline doctors, recommended last month that states consider action against doctors who share false medical claims, including suspending or revoking licenses. The American Medical Association says spreading misinformation violates the code of ethics that licensed doctors agree to follow.
"When a doctor speaks, people pay attention," said Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, president of the Federation of State Medical Boards. "The title of being a physician lends credibility to what people say to the general public. That's why it is so important that these doctors don't spread misinformation."
Stock joined physicians including Joseph Mercola and a group that calls itself America's Frontline Doctors in generating large audiences for their bogus claims. The statements by them and others have contributed to vaccine hesitancy and a resistance to masks that has exacerbated the pandemic in the United States, public health officials say.
The doctors often stand in lab coats and use simplified medical jargon, lending an air of authority. They often take advantage of a ready audience online by livestreaming news conferences, and keep interest alive by promising new evidence that will expose corruption and support their arguments.
Chaudhry said it was impossible to know how many states had opened investigations into doctors spreading misinformation. Such investigations are typically not publicized until a decision is reached, and the process can take many months.
Stock, 59, did not respond to several requests for comment. He has been a licensed doctor in Indiana since 1989, a year after he graduated from the Indiana University School of Medicine. He has worked in several hospitals, urgent care centers and private practices in the state, according to a profile on LinkedIn.
On Stock's website he sets himself apart from conventional medicine. "By presenting patients with all of their treatment options -- whether that's a pill, lifestyle change, therapy, or supplements -- I help patients choose the option that works best for them," the website says. "This results in permanent healing, not merely the temporary relief found in the traditional system." He sells dozens of vitamins and supplements on the site.
Information for this article was contributed by Terry Spencer, Curt Anderson, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Jay Reeves, Mike Stobbe and Jill Bleed of The Associated Press; and by Davey Alba and Sheera Frenkel of The New York Times.
