Feds investigating five states for civil rights violations over mask mandate bans

(CN) — Making good on President Joe Biden’s direction to use “use all available tools” to ensure children have a safe return to school amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. Education Department on Monday opened civil rights investigations in five states that have prohibitions or restrictions on school mask mandates.

The investigations will look at whether those prohibitions discriminate against students who are at heightened risk for severe illness from Covid-19 by preventing them from safely accessing in-person education, a violation of federal law, according to the department.

“The department has heard from parents from across the country — particularly parents of students with disabilities and with underlying medical conditions — about how state bans on universal indoor masking are putting their children at risk and preventing them from accessing in-person learning equally,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement announcing the investigations. 

The states being investigated include Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. Chief state school officers in each state received a letter from the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights outlining the department’s concerns.

State mask restrictions may be preventing schools from “meeting their legal obligations not to discriminate based on disability and from providing an equal educational opportunity to students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from Covid-19," the letters state.

Investigations into Florida, Texas, Arkansas, or Arizona have not been opened because the courts have halted those states’ bans on mask mandates, but the Education Department said it would “continue to closely monitor those states and is prepared to take action” if needed.

Under federal law, students with disabilities are guaranteed the right to public education alongside their peers, to the extent appropriate in line with their needs. Federal law also prohibits disability discrimination from public entities, which includes public schools.

As part of its investigation, the civil rights office — a neutral fact-finder — will begin “collecting and analyzing relevant evidence from state education agencies and other sources as appropriate prior to reaching determinations in these matters.”

In Tennessee, for example, Republican Governor Bill Lee signed an executive order on Aug. 16 overriding local school districts’ efforts to require staff and students to wear masks by giving parents the right to opt out of those requirements.

By the following week — just two weeks after the school year began — children made up over one-third of active cases. It was a rate never before seen in children, and the number of new cases and hospitalizations continue to climb in both children and adults, according to Tennessee Department of Health data.

Lee’s office said it received the letter and are reviewing but did not offer any additional comment. Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn's office said the same.

The governor received an earlier letter from Cardona on Aug. 18 warning that his action “to block school districts from voluntarily adopting science-based strategies for preventing the spread of Covid-19 ... may infringe upon a school district’s authority to adopt policies to protect students and educators as they develop their safe return to in-person instruction plans required by federal law.”

In response, Lee tweeted, “Parents know better than the government what’s best for their children.”

Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers have been hyper-vigilant of parental authority over children’s health care, despite no evidence that parental authority was being snubbed. Lawmakers went as far as accusing the state health department of “peer-pressuring” teens into getting immunized against Covid-19 through targeted “marketing” and pressuring the department to fire its immunization program director in mid-July.

The firing came after the immunization director distributed a memo to health care providers administering Covid-19 vaccines making them aware of the state’s mature minor doctrine — a legal precedent which states that minors 14 and above can be medically treated without parental consent if their provider determines they’re “sufficiently mature.”

The state health department also halted its vaccine outreach efforts to adolescents amid the pushback and only weeks ahead of schools reopening, saying it needed to make sure its informative materials were directed at parents.

Now, with children — including those still too young to receive the vaccine — back in the classroom, “it's simply unacceptable,”  Cardona said Monday, “that state leaders are putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve. The department will fight to protect every student's right to access in-person learning safely and the rights of local educators to put in place policies that allow all students to return to the classroom full-time in-person safely this fall.”

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