Federal judges granted injunctions on Sept. 24 in two more Tennessee counties against the enforcement of Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order requiring that school districts allow parents to opt their children out of school mask mandates.
The two U.S. District Court judges blocked Lee’s order from being enforced in Knox and Williamson counties, as well as the Franklin Special School District.
The Sept. 24 rulings stem from two separate lawsuits brought by students with disabilities or chronic illnesses. Both lawsuits claimed that the executive order was in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, arguing that allowing some students to opt-out of the masking requirement made the plaintiffs’ children unable to safely attend schools compared to their healthier peers.
Neither a school district in Williamson County nor the Franklin Special School District opposed the injunction prior to its issuance.
“The record at this stage shows that temporary universal mask mandates adopted by the Williamson County and Franklin school systems have been, and likely would continue to be, effective in curbing the spread of COVID-19,” Crenshaw wrote in his decision.
The judge wrote that the risk from COVID-19 to the plaintiffs “and any other similarly situated individual with a right of access to Knox County’s school buildings is neither speculative nor theoretical. It is real, and likely.”
The dispute over school mask mandate is split sharply along political lines, with most Democrats staunchly defending the mandates and most Republicans opposing them.