Glenn Youngkin Joins Mask Mandate Lawsuit Against Loudoun County: ‘School Board Willfully Defied A Lawful Order from the Governor’

A Virginia judge has allowed Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) administration to join a lawsuit brought by parents against Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) challenging their student mask mandate in direct contravention of Executive Order (EO) 2, which made masks optional.

Virginia Gov. Youngkin, Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow were granted intervenor status in the case.

The parents, who are being represented by the Jones Day law firm, allege that LCPS has denied an adequate education to their children and is “defying a lawful public health directive issued by the Governor pursuant to his well-established authority under the Virginia Code and Constitution and is further ignoring the rights of Virginia parents to make basic decisions about the health and well-being of their children.”

Citing the Virginia health department, the plaintiffs argue “there is no medical reason for a vaccinated and/or masked teacher to treat an otherwise healthy unmasked student any differently than a healthy masked student.”

They further point out that children have paid a “particularly substantial price,” including “learning loss, depression and suicide, alcoholism and drug use.”

And while children in every other aspect of their lives are able to participate in society without wearing a mask, “children in Loudoun County’s public schools remain trapped in 2020-era pandemic polices that are increasingly difficult to justify.”

They are particularly difficult to justify because “there is little evidence that forcing children to wear masks all day meaningfully ‘stops the spread’ of a virus that is almost certainly endemic, while there is mounting evidence that such masking requirements can cause children serious physical, psychological, and developmental harm.”

The plaintiff parents and the intervening Youngkin administration, which is being represented by Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), both make mask efficacy and educational, social, and psychological development central to their argument against the county-cited “maximum extent practicable” adherence to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That standard came from S.B. 1303, a law passed by the Virginia General Assembly during the pandemic “in response to the recalcitrance of school boards like Loudoun County,” to require school boards to “offer in-person instruction to each student enrolled in the local school division in a public elementary and secondary school for at least the minimum number of required instructional hours.”

In fact, taking on masks directly, the Youngkin filing to intervene lists several key points, many of which mirror EO 2, arguing that “this mitigation measure has proven to be ineffective and impractical,” including in part:

• “During the recent Omicron variant outbreak, locations with restrictive masking policies have had similar or greater rates of transmission as those with less restrictive mask policies.”
• “Studies have also shown that the risk of COVID-19 infection and spread in schools is low.”
• “The rate of hospitalization among school-age children is similarly low.”
• “And children are at a very low risk of severe illness due to COVID-19.”
• “The transmission-mitigation benefits of compelling children to wear masks in school remain unclear.”
• “Even when required, universal masking among children may still be ineffective because many children wear cloth masks which provide little-to-no protection and have in fact been shown to pose serious health risks.”
• “Requiring masks in schools may also be an ineffective mitigation strategy given children often wear masks improperly or incorrectly.”
• “There is a growing consensus that mask mandates in schools may harm early childhood development, especially kids whose lingual or social development is atypical.”
• “Studies have additionally shown that masks may harm children’s ability to form solid social and emotional ties with friends, teachers, and other members of their community — particularly for children whose development is atypical.”

“The School Board apparently felt it needed to ‘comply with’ state legislation which, according to the Board, ‘requires school boards to adhere to mitigation procedures, like mask[ ]wearing, to the extent practicable as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC),'” the argument to intervene stated.

But as Breitbart News reported, school boards are not required under Virginia law to follow the CDC’s school masking guidance, but rather an EO signed by former Gov. Ralph Northam (D) creating a mask mandate. The Youngkin administration’s argument points out, however, that Northam’s mask mandate order was reversed by Youngkin’s EO 2, using the same authority.

Even still, as the plaintiff parents point out, “current CDC guidance does not require that all students wear masks at all times while attending school in-person” — it “recommends.”

“Governor Youngkin concluded that intervention in this matter is necessary to enforce EO 2 and to preserve the legal rights of the Plaintiff Parents and all Loudoun County parents to make decisions about their children’s education,” the administration’s filing said. “The School Board willfully defied a lawful order from the Governor, opting instead to compromise the health and welfare of the Commonwealth’s children via adherence to a defunct order, and to interfere with both the Governor’s duty to manage an ongoing emergency and parents’ rights to have a say in how their children are cared for and educated.”

The power structure surrounding the EOs in question comes from the Virginia Emergency Services and Disaster Law of 2000 (VESDL), which gives the governor of Virginia expansive authority to suspend and implement certain policy goals with the weight of law over the course of the emergency, including the power to suspend other requirements of state law.

Northam, for his part, used the powers invoked in EO 51 — a state of emergency declaration that remains in effect — as a result of the coronavirus pandemic to implement widespread lockdowns and mask requirements.

For example, the lawsuit points out:

• EO 53 “banned gatherings of 10 or more people; required food and beverage establishments to close their dine-in areas; and shuttered theaters, concert venues, museums, gyms, barbershops/salons, bowling alleys, indoor entertainment businesses, and social clubs”;
• EO 55 “forbade Virginians from leaving their homes for any other than a small number of enumerated reasons” as well as shut down in-person learning at colleges and universities;
• EO 63 “ordered all Virginians to wear masks in any indoor place shared by groups of people in close proximity to each other, apart from private residences”; and,
• EO 67 “restricted religious services by requiring non-family members to sit six feet apart and mandated single-serving containers for food and drink.”

Using the exact same emergency authority, Youngkin issued EO 2 in order to “empower Virginia parents in their child’s education and upbringing by allowing parents to make decisions on whether their child wears a mask in school.”

“The Governor has concluded that EO 2 is a necessary measure to protect public health, safety, and welfare during the COVID-19 emergency, in particular the health and safety of children,” the argument to intervene states. Citing legal precedent, the administration argues, “The protection of children from harm, whether moral, emotional, mental, or physical, is a valid and compelling state interest.”

“He brings this suit to protect the health and safety of all Virginians,” the filing continues. “He also brings this suit to protect the fundamental right of every Virginia child to an education.”

The effects of coronavirus policies on children have been particularly disturbing, and are detailed heavily by the parent plaintiffs as well as in the Youngkin intervention.

“Each of the Plaintiff Parents’ children has been refused an in-person education after arriving at school without a mask, in accordance with their parents’ wishes and in reliance on EO 2,” the filing to intervene states. “Each of the Plaintiff Parents has observed adverse physical and mental health effects stemming from long periods of forced mask wearing in school.”

Effects of masking and “remote learning” were known to medical experts early on, and “unsurprisingly ‘forc[ed] a striking drop in students’ academic performance’ in one major Virginia school district”; for example, the number of middle and high school students “earning F’s in at least two classes jumped by 83 percent.” As the case points out, this was a national trend.

In June 2020, Northam announced all schools would be open for the upcoming school year, but by September 2020, only ten out of Virginia’s 132 school districts complied — with most opting for either hybrid of fully remote learning.

The LCPS school board, for its part, voted for “all virtual” and “no in-person instruction.”

In December 2020, LCPS announced it “w[ould] return all students to online learning, a reversal that affect[ed] roughly 18,000 children who had gone back to school buildings over the past few months.”

This announcement, however, came despite the fact that “it d[id] not appear that Loudoun’s reopened school buildings functioned as superspreader sites” and the Virginia Department of Health had recently reported “that Loudoun County was witnessing no coronavirus outbreaks inside schools.”

But learning loss was not the only negative effect the seemingly erroneous lockdowns brought to children.

Indeed, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy pointed out that “depression and anxiety symptoms for youth around the world had doubled during the pandemic and that clinical data also revealed that ‘suspected suicide attempts were 51% higher for adolescent girls and 4% higher for adolescent boys compared to the same time period in early 2019.'”

“‘Pandemic-related measures … made it harder to recognize signs of child abuse, mental health concerns, and other challenges’ children were facing given the ‘reduced in-person interactions among children, friends, social supports, and professionals such as teachers [and] school counselors,'” Murthy’s study stated.

But these realities did not stop LCPS from implementing harsh mandates with punitive measures for students who do not comply.

In a letter announcing their defiance of EO 2, LCPS stated “a student who is suspended because of non-compliance with COVID-mitigation measures may return to school only when they agree to follow COVID-mitigation measures throughout the entire school day and at all indoor school-related events. Suspension will continue if COVID-mitigation measures are not followed.”

Furthermore, Youngkin’s filing pointed out the “segregation of students based on mask status” and that one fifth-grade student was permanently expelled for refusing to wear a mask.

Another powerhouse law firm, Schaerr Jaffe, filed a brief representing a family whose daughter was suspended despite her religious objection to wearing a mask, supported by the American Constitutional Rights Union.

“The School Board has thus expressly conditioned students’ ability to obtain an in-person education on compliance with the Universal Mask Mandate, in clear contravention of Executive Order 2,” the plaintiff parents argue in their filing.

The case is Barnett v. Loudoun County School Board, No. 22-546 in the Circuit Court of Loudoun County, Virginia.

Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.