The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday rejected the Pritzker Administration’s request to appeal a lower appellate ruling, thereby effectively ending the statewide school mask mandate. Individual school districts became free across Illinois to decide for themselves on school masks. After the ruling, Pritzker said his mandate will end on Monday, a mandate he has claimed is legal and still effective despite lower court rulings to the contrary.
The Pritzker Administration’s response to the Supreme Court’s order is particularly deceitful in two ways.
First, in his written statement, Pritzker said, “I’m gratified that the Supreme Court vacated the lower court’s restraining order, meaning that if a school mask mandate needs to go into effect in the future, we continue to have that authority.”
That’s simply not true. The court did not reverse the ruling by the lower courts or indicate in any way that Pritzker has that future authority. Any such later effort by Pritzker would face the same issues on which Pritzker lost in the initial ruling by a lower court on February 4, unless the facts change.
All the Supreme Court did, aside from rejecting Pritzker’s request for permission to appeal, is vacate a temporary restraining order that was issued in favor of certain named plaintiffs** as part of the February 4 ruling. Vacating that restraining order was appropriate, the Supreme Court said, because the whole case is moot. That may be interpreted to mean it’s as if the lower court’s decision was never made and that it cannot be cited as precedent in future cases. However, it does not in any way mean that the lower court’s conclusions were wrong.
The attorney for the plaintiffs, Tom DeVore, does’t even think the new ruling goes that far. “Even though the temporary restraining order is not in effect, [the lower court judge’s] legal analysis is still the law of the state because neither the appellate court or the supreme court overruled her legal analysis,” attorney DeVore told The Center Square Friday evening.
In any event, Pritzker has no basis whatsoever for claiming that “it’s clear that if a school mask mandate needs to go into effect in the future, we continue to have that authority.” If he tried it again he would be back in court again.
Pritzker’s Friday statement went on to say, “I’m also extremely pleased to say that because the CDC has recommended that masks are needed only in areas of high transmission, the State of Illinois will move forward to remove our school mask mandate, effective Monday.”
From that, we are apparently supposed to believe that he was merely following the CDC’s recommendations in dropping his mandate.
CDC map on Feb. 25. High transmission areas in orange.
But that doesn’t fit. The new CDC guidance, issued on Friday, says schools should continue to require masks if they are in high risk areas shown in orange on their map. Parts of Illinois are still in those high risk areas, but Pritzker is dropping his mandate for the whole state.
What actually happened is he got beat and ran out of excuses. He had earlier called DeVore a “grifter,” ridiculed the lower court judge for “cultivating chaos,” then said the intermediate appellate court was influenced by politics. But the Supreme Court was strike three.
He was wrong on the law, wrong on the science behind masking and wrong on the politics which he should have seen had turned sharply against school masking at least several weeks ago.
So he cut bait. Better late than never.
Over 93% of Illinois school districts have gone mask optional. Chicago remains among the few still mandating masks on kids.