Biden finds Missouri challenge to school mask mandates ‘unacceptable,’ White House says
President Joe Biden finds Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s lawsuit seeking to block school mask mandates “unacceptable,” the White House said Tuesday.
“We’ve seen, including recently I think today or yesterday in Missouri, additional steps taken that in our view put more kids at risk. The president thinks that’s completely unacceptable,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing.
Psaki’s comments came hours after Schmitt, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, filed a class action lawsuit in Missouri’s Boone County Circuit Court in an attempt to stop school districts from enforcing mask mandates. The suit targets Columbia Public Schools but seeks to compel dozens of districts, including Kansas City, to drop rules requiring students and teachers to mask up.
Schmitt’s lawsuit comes amid a wider battle between the White House and state-level Republicans over school mask mandates. Biden last week floated possible legal action against GOP governors who seek to block schools from enacting mask requirements.
“I won’t let Washington dictate what we do in Missouri,” Schmitt said on Twitter in response to Psaki. “I’m fighting against forced masking of kids and allowing families to make those decisions not government bureaucrats.”
Biden has directed Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona “to use all his authority to help those school districts doing the right thing to ensure every one of their students has access to a fundamental right of safe in-person learning,” Psaki said.
Schmitt’s lawsuit, the latest in a series of legal challenges against local mask directives, alleges mandates for students and teachers are “arbitrary and capricious.” The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both recommend students wear masks in class.
Missouri has struggled in recent weeks with a wave of COVID-19 cases fueled by the delta variant. More than 15,172 confirmed and likely cases have been reported over the past week alone, though the daily number of cases has begun declining again in recently.
Lowry reported from Washington.
This story was originally published August 24, 2021 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Biden finds Missouri challenge to school mask mandates ‘unacceptable,’ White House says."
