It’s about time someone lifted outdated mask mandates for the entire airline industry
Sometimes it takes one brave person to defy the norm.
A federal judge has ruled that the national mask mandate on airlines and public transportation is unlawful. U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa, Florida, said in her ruling Monday that health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had exceeded their authority in issuing the mandate.
The CDC extended the mandate for public transportation for nearly another month due to the existence of yet another COVID-19 variant, even while case and death rates have plummeted and mask wearing has waned in most other settings.
Some people were strangely upset about this. Some travelers started begging people to continue to wear masks, which are now optional. Others, mostly liberals, started criticizing the judge, implying she’s too young to make such an important decision or unqualified because she was a Donald Trump appointee.
Airlines have been a weird last frontier in the COVID war, subjected to mask mandates to the bitter end when other businesses and schools were excluded.
Still, as soon as the judge issued her ruling, all major airlines instantly went along, including American, Southwest, Delta, United and Alaska. Airline CEOs had formally asked President Joe Biden to lift mask mandates about a month ago to no avail.
Mask mandates for airline passengers have wreaked havoc especially for families with young people. One family sued an airline and the CDC because they refused to grant a mask exemption to a 4-year-old autistic child who had to travel for medical treatment. Videos of airline employees booting guests from flights over masks abound.
For progressives who are saying they can’t believe the entire airline industry’s mask mandate policy can be lifted by a sole Trump-appointed judge who hasn’t even hit age 40, recall that cities, states, and private industries have been under various stages of mandates executed by either the president, a governor or a mayor. They also didn’t seem to mind when a lone judge overturned Trump on issues such as immigration.
The original travel mask mandate, which was first issued in February 2021, covered all public transportation, including airplanes, trains and more. The CDC’s guidelines have shifted goalposts since COVID began in early 2020. Now that vaccines and treatments are widely available, mask requirements no longer make sense.
It’s about time someone with common sense and courage lifted spurious mask mandates that have been making airline travel miserable for everyone.
This story was originally published April 19, 2022 at 12:04 PM with the headline "It’s about time someone lifted outdated mask mandates for the entire airline industry."
