A Southern California school board announced plans to sue Gov. Gavin Newsom over a state mandate requiring K-12 students to wear masks in classrooms, saying face coverings are harmful to children and the governor is abusing his power.
The board voted Tuesday night to pursue a legal challenge to Newsom’s ongoing assertion of emergency rule-making powers due to the coronavirus pandemic, specifically the school mask mandate, which was issued last month.
From the Orange County Register, “The board voted 4-0 during closed session in favor of filing the suit, and then had an attorney read a press release in which they said Newsom has abused his authority by indefinitely continuing to issue health edicts under a state of emergency.”
According to the reports, “The Board has approved this challenge to protect our kids, and to uphold the rule of law and our constitutional framework of government and separation of powers.”
California announced new state regulations last month prohibiting most students from entering public K-12 campuses if they do not wear face coverings inside buildings and classrooms, regardless of vaccination status, per a previous report of The Daily Wire.
the Board said, “The Governor and his executive agencies, by emergency fiat that violates state constitutional and statutory law, threaten to extend and compound the harm to California’s children previously caused by prior school closures and unwarranted masking requirements, when necessary, the Board will fight to protect the health, safety, and welfare of our county’s kids at school. Unfortunately, with the Governor’s most recent action to force Orange County’s children, even those as young as 5 and 6 years old, to endure an academic year covering their faces for hours on end, the time to fight has come again.”
Here are the details provided by The Register:
Board members Mari Barke, Tim Shaw, Lisa Sparks and Ken Williams voted in favor of filing the lawsuit during a special meeting Tuesday that featured only one item on the agenda: litigation. Board member Beckie Gomez, who attended the beginning of the meeting, left at 4:30 p.m and was not present for the vote.
Barke, the board president, said after the meeting that with schools about to reopen for the new academic year, “children are our top priority.”
In the past month, case rates across the state and locally have surged. On Aug. 2, Orange County reported an average of 626 new COVID-19 cases a day for the previous seven days, up from 72 new cases a day reported on July 2.
The Board approved the retention of pro bono legal counsel by Tyler & Bursch, LLP, and said the litigation would not incur legal fees passed on to taxpayers. Last August, the law firm also represented the Board when the body sued Newsom and the state’s public health officer seeking in-person learning. The lawsuit went straight to the California Supreme Court, but the Board’s petition to reopen campuses was denied.
Sources: Dailywire, Marinij, Latimes, Ocregister