President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is officially fighting to re-impose mask mandates on Americans after it filed an appeal with a federal court Tuesday.
The DOJ filed a 48-page document with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing against a decision made by a federal judge in April overturning the Biden administration’s mask mandate for airplanes and public transportation. The administration had previously indicated it intended to fight back against the overturning of the mandate, which was one of the last remaining in the country.
The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to overturn the court decision that declared the mask mandate on airplanes and other public transportation unlawful.https://t.co/ICW6c8ndhL
— NPR (@NPR) June 1, 2022
“The CDC order at issue here generally requires that people wear masks on public transportation and in transportation hubs to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” the filing reads. “That order falls easily within the CDC’s statutory authority, which includes measures that ‘directly relate to preventing the interstate spread of disease by identifying, isolating, and destroying the disease itself.'”
District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, ruled in April that the mask mandate exceeded the statutory authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The policy “violates the procedures required for agency rulemaking under the APA (Administrative Procedure Act)”, she wrote. (RELATED: Flight Attendants Celebrate The Public Travel Mask Mandate Ending In Viral Video)
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence showing that airplanes are one of the safest places a person can be indoors with regard to COVID-19 risk, members of the Biden administration lambasted the court ruling. “For a court to come in, and if you look at the rationale for that it really is not particularly firm, and we are concerned about that, about courts getting involved in things that are unequivocally public health issues,” said NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci.