One congressman says the Department of Justice (DOJ) is misinterpreting the statute it’s citing as it appeals a decision from a federal judge that says the government exceeded its authority by imposing mask mandates on public transportation.
On April 18, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) exceeded its authority when it put a mandate in place for mask wearing on buses, planes and the like in February 2021. Mizelle also ruled the CDC violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because it didn’t give notice before moving forward with the mandate.
The DOJ announced last week that it is appealing Mizelle’s decision, releasing a statement that said the DOJ “continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health.”
Virginia Republican Rep. Ben Cline disagrees.
In an exchange Thursday with Attorney General Merrick Garland during a House Appropriations Committee Hearing, Cline called into question the CDC’s use of the authority granted in the Public Health Services Act.
Cline points to an excerpt from Mizelle’s ruling saying that the provision used by the CDC to justify its authority has “rarely been invoked” and has “generally been limited to quarantining infected individuals and prohibiting the import or sale of animals known to transmit disease.”
“Is it the administration’s interpretation that mandatory masking is a form of sanitation and how so?” asked Cline.
Garland acknowledged that “sanitation” is one of the issues included in the litigation. He went on to point out that the DOJ decision to appeal hinges on CDC’s conclusion that the masking order remains necessary for public health.
“It’s the CDC that makes the public policy and public health determinations,” Garland said. “And our only role is to determine whether it has statutory authority.”
Cline concluded the line of questioning by expressing his hope that the Justice Department reconsiders its decision to appeal the mask mandate ruling.
“I think what we’re seeing here is a broad misinterpretation of the statute and a misapplication—not to mention the failure to follow the APA in the process,” Cline said.
The DOJ has yet to formally issue its appeal, according to the relevant docket report.
The plaintiffs in the case, a nonprofit group called Health Freedom Defense Fund, issued a statement Friday speculating as to whether the Biden administration will, in fact, prosecute its appeal on its merits or “attempt to find a backdoor to make the case go away in order to retain authority for future use.”
“We say that the government cannot do what it wants, when it wants and to whom it wants, even under the guise of public health and pandemic policy,” the statement reads. “The government believes it has those powers over our lives, and is desperately seeking a path to preserve them, at the expense of our bedrock freedoms.”
A total of 22 countries around the world have dropped mask mandates since January this year.
