Biden Admin Urges Judges to Lift Stay on CDC’s Airplane Mask Mandate

President Joe Biden’s administration in a court hearing on Jan. 17 urged judges on a federal appeals court to overturn a ruling from a lower court that struck down the administration’s airplane mask mandate.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “good cause” to impose the mandate and bypass the notice- and comment period required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), Brian Springer, an attorney for the government, told judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

The mandate was implemented in 2021. “there were variants that had just been detected that showed signs of increased transmissibility, and people were starting to travel again,” Springer said. “In those circumstances, the CDC had good cause to issue this order, particularly when the CDC detailed the reasons why in this particular environment, namely in the transportation sector and in transportation settings, COVID had a specific tendency to spread among people who are traveling together because they’re standing together in lines and sitting together on conveyances.”

One judge expressed doubt about the line of thinking and accused CDC of issuing “boilerplate” language used to impose the mandate in place of a comment period and notice. Under a ruling in a separate case, boilerplate statements that COVID-19 exists and that there’s a public emergency aren’t sufficient to satisfy the “good cause” APAException Springer disagreed, saying the CDC’s statement provided rationale that met the standard.

Kathryn Kimball Mizelle (U.S. District Judge) was a Trump appointee. her 2022 ruling The CDC violated the APA when it only issued one conclusory paragraph to support the waiver of notice requirements.

She stated that approximately a year had passed from the start of the pandemic. COVID-19 incidences in America were declining.

Brent Hardaway, arguing for Health Freedom Defense Fund, which brought the case, said that the mandate was “very strange” Given the fact that mandates were already in place for many airports, as well as the decrease in cases.

Is the CDC authorized to mandate masks?

Another portion of the hearing was devoted to arguments regarding whether or not the CDC has the authority and power to require masks.

The U.S. Code gives the federal government the authority to enforce regulations deemed as “necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession.”

To enforce these measures, the government “may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary,” The statute states.

In striking down the CDC’s moratorium on evictions, the Supreme Court found that the agency overstepped the authority outlined in the law. However, the court stated that the law gave the CDC the power to impose measures. “directly relate to preventing the interstate spread of disease by identifying, isolating, and destroying the disease itself.”

The decision “recognized that conventional measures to identify, isolate and destroy communicable diseases fall within the statute,” Springer said. “The CDC’s mask order was a very modest way to, and a traditional way to, prevent this interstate spread of disease that falls directly within the heartland of what the Supreme Court told us that this statute covers.”

Springer asked the court to narrow the district court’s decision from applying to all travelers to just the five individuals that brought the case. If the court grants permission, the mask mandate would be reinstated for nearly all Americans traveling in airplanes, planes, or other transport settings.

Mizelle has ruled that mask mandates don’t fall under sanitation and that the “other measures” Based on the history of the law, and court rulings, the limitations were minimal.

“The mask mandate is best understood not as sanitation, but as an exercise of the CDC’s power to conditionally release individuals to travel despite concerns that they may spread a communicable disease (and to detain or partially quarantine those who refuse). But the power to conditionally release and detain is ordinarily limited to individuals entering the United States from a foreign country,” Mizelle wrote, noting that a part of the law only allows for the detention of a person traveling between the states if that person is “reasonably believed to be infected” And it is found “upon examination” To be infected.

Judge ruled that the CDC had exceeded its authority by issuing the mandate.

Hardaway testified in court Tuesday that the law did not allow the CDC to impose mask mandates. However, one judge questioned whether this was true.

“It just seems strange to me that an agency like the Center for Disease Control doesn’t have the authority to require travelers to wear a mask when they travel as a way to prevent the spread of communicable disease in the context of a global pandemic,” The judge agreed. “If they don’t have that authority, what authority do they have?”

Hardaway stated that the eviction decision showed why it was not unusual and asked the judges to examine the law which was used by the government for various measures.

“Their reading of sanitation is basically any measure that may promote sanitation,” He said. “It’s basically going to have the same kind of sweeping implications of the rule that the Supreme Court rejected.”

Zachary Stieber, a senior reporter at The Epoch Times is based in Maryland. He reports on U.S. news and international news.