Rhode Island Parents Win Concessions in Mask Mandate Case

A student adjusts her facemask at St. Joseph Catholic School in La Puente, Calif., on Nov. 16, 2020. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Rhode Island parents who sued officials over the state’s school mask mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic have won concessions from the Rhode Island Department of Health, including an agreement to hold a public hearing on data on masking, according to lawyers representing the parents.

Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) officials agreed in a settlement outlined in court on Dec. 12 to hold a public hearing that will go over whether compulsory masking in public schools is appropriate, according to Gregory Piccirilli, one of the lawyers.

RIDOH also said it will clarify to public schools that there is no mask mandate for students in place now, Mr. Piccirilli said.

In exchange for the concessions, the parents who sued state officials over the mandate have agreed to dismiss the suit.

“The most important part is that the Department of Health has agreed to conduct a public hearing on the efficacy of masking in public schools. That is what we’ve been asking for two years: Just give us a public hearing, let the public debate the legitimacy, the efficacy of these masks,” Mr. Piccirilli said after the hearing.

“Because we’re confident that when the evidence comes forward in the proper setting, a public health hearing, it’s overwhelmingly going to show that masking in public schools not only does not work, but actually has a deleterious effect on children.”

The commitment to hold the hearing appears to be the first such commitment in the nation.

RIDOH declined to comment.

“This case is not yet legally settled. RIDOH does not comment on pending cases,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

A judge previously declined to block the mandate even though he agreed that plaintiffs gave “credible testimony ... that their children were suffering adverse effects from the requirement that they wear masks throughout the school day.”

But he said that the benefits of masking outweighed the harms it causes.

“Even with the recognition that the wearing of masks creates some irreparable harm to students, that harm is significantly outweighed by the harm caused by the unmasked spread of the disease, particularly among children,” Rhode Island Superior Court Associate Justice Jeffrey Lanphear said in the 2021 ruling rejecting a request for a preliminary injunction.

Authorities later rolled back the mandate but have not committed to not imposing it again in the future.

Hearing

In a normal regulatory process, authorities give public notice and hold a hearing in which people testify, Mr. Piccirilli told The Epoch Times. Authorities then have to run a cost-benefit analysis and consider all the evidence that was presented.

The school mask mandate was issued as an emergency regulation in 2020, bypassing the normal procedure. It was reissued in 2021, prompting the suit.

“If no action is taken to stop these continuous executive actions, these parents fear that there will be no end to these mandates,” the suit stated. “Some decisionmakers have suggested that wearing masks could become a common practice in schools, a thought which should horrify any honest thinking person on this issue.”

The hearing will present evidence “so that if they ever try to do this again in the future, the evidence will already be on record that it doesn’t work and they won’t be able to do it again,” Mr. Piccirilli said.

In promulgating the mandate, Gov. Dan McKee’s office cited guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a recommendation from the Academy of American Pediatrics, and state COVID-19 data. None outlined evidence showing that masking works or showing “the potential harm caused by doing so,” plaintiffs said.

In a letter to school districts, RIDOH cited two studies—a non-peer-reviewed study on masking manikins and the CDC’s website.

Dr. Jason McDonald, RIDOH’s former top official, acknowledged in a deposition that he was unaware of studies that undercut school mask mandates, including one that found no relationship between masking in schools and COVID-19 cases.

Dr. Andrew Bostom, a retired professor of medicine, testified for the parents that there was no evidence supporting mask mandates in schools.

Memo

After Mr. McKee lifted the school mask mandate on March 4, 2022, Dr. McDonald told parents in Rhode Island that students who test positive for COVID-19 “must stay home and isolate for at least 5 days.”

If the students wore a mask, they could return to school on the sixth day, but if they did not, “they must isolate at home for the full 10 days following the positive test,” the memo, discovered by plaintiffs, stated.

Mr. McDonald said in the deposition that the memo was outlining recommendations from the CDC and was not a requirement.

“The language was very confusing, and a number of schools were interpreting it as another mask mandate,” Mr. Piccirilli said.

Under the settlement, RIDOH will have to clarify that the memo was not issuing a mandate, he said.