Big — Pennsylvania Supreme Court strikes down K-12 mask mandate

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a statewide mask mandate for Pennsylvania schoolchildren on Friday, in a defeat for Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration.

The justices announced their decision to uphold a lower court order vacating the mandate, but have not yet issued a written opinion explaining the reasoning of the court.

Specifically, the lower court found that Pennsylvania’s disease control law does not give Beam “the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures.”

Pennsylvania schools will now each be free to make their own masking policies, the Associated Press reported.

“The decision will be left to the 500 school districts in Pennsylvania, with respect to what to do with the implications of this order,” Thomas W. King III, an attorney representing Republican lawmakers, school districts, schools, and parents who challenged the masking requirements, said.

The Blaze