Republicans who flouted mask rules sue Pelosi over fines

WASHINGTON (CN) — Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and two other Republican members of Congress sued House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after receiving fines for breaching coronavirus-safety directives on mask wearing.

The federal complaint filed Tuesday in Washington comes a week after the House Ethics Committee rejected appeals from the three representatives over their $500 fines from refusing to wear a mask May 18-19.

Now, Greene, of Georgia, along with Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ralph Norman of South Carolina claim that the 27th Amendment, which prevents Congress from changing lawmaker’s salaries in between elections, makes the fines unconstitutional.

“Nancy Pelosi did this by edict. There’s no law. She changed this rule on her own,” Massie said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “She did it unconstitutionally.”

Last year, House Democrats approved a rule allowing representatives to be fined $500 for their first offense and $2,500 for their next offense. Greene also received a $2,500 fine for her second violation.

Holding up a photo of the three maskless plaintiffs on the House Floor on May 18, Massie compared it to a maskless photo of Pelosi on the same day,

“This is on the same day in the same chamber,” Massie said. “She deducted money from our paychecks. Why? Because we did exactly what she did. Went in there without a mask on.”

Massie’s statement is not accurate as Pelosi entered the chamber wearing a mask, only removing it once at the podium to address lawmakers from a significant physical distance.

In court, the lawmakers are represented by the law firms Bruns Connell and Siri & Glimstad, of Cincinnati and New York, respectively, and by two solo practitioners, Christopher West of Crestview Hills, Kentucky, and John Garza, of Rockville, Maryland.

With a footnote to an article by The Hill that says something substantively different, the 24-page lawsuit claims that Pelosi allowed Covid-positive members to walk the hallways in the House so that they could vote for her to be elected speaker. But the cited article makes no mention of Covid-positive lawmakers, saying that House lawmakers “exposed” to the virus were given their own section to vote.

It is another assertion of the complaint that Pelosi only enforced the mask rule in televised areas, not committee hearing rooms and other meeting rooms.

“The rule, therefore, appears to have been designed not for safety, but to compel symbolic speech regarding …  masks and individual rights in the manner favored by the majority, and to compel that speech solely in an area designed to play to the television cameras that cover the Hall of the House,” the lawsuit states.

Greene, Massie and Norman claim that Democrats’ intent was to force Republicans to be instruments in fostering public adherence to an ideological viewpoint. This is why the plaintiffs say they marched into the House without masks: as a symbolic protest speech to show that mask wearing is “merely political theater” and that “one’s bodily integrity should be free from government control.”

What’s more, they claim that choosing not to wear a mask didn’t interfere with House proceedings, as evidenced by the fact that the House was not delayed or stopped at all on that day.

On June 11, House rules changed to allow all vaccinated people to remove their masks on the House floor.

“It is beyond me why we are mistreating people, segregating people, discriminating against people for masks and vaccines, which should be a choice,” Greene said at the press conference.

Norman is vaccinated, Massie is not as he has tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, and Greene won’t disclose her vaccination status, claiming that she shouldn’t be forced to reveal her private health information.