Airline passengers, some without masks after the end of federal regulation, sit on an American Airlines flight operated by SkyWest Airlines from Los Angeles International Airport to Denver, Tuesday.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
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Airline passengers, some without masks after the end of federal regulation, sit on an American Airlines flight operated by SkyWest Airlines from Los Angeles International Airport to Denver, Tuesday.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
When US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle removed the federal government’s transportation mask regulation on Monday, in part she relied on her interpretation of the term “sanitary.”
The 10-letter word can be found in the Public Health Services Act, a long statute of 1944 gave the federal government certain powers to respond to public health emergencies.
The Biden administration has relied on part of the Public Health Services Act to protect its regulation of COVID-19 masks on airplanes and other forms of public transportation.
Specifically, the law says that if the government is trying to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, it can “provide for activities of inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, extermination of worms bugs, destruction of animals or items found to be infected or contaminated, to be a dangerous source of human infection, and other measures, in his opinion, may be necessary. “
The administration argued that masks qualifies as “sanitary” under the law, but Mizelle disagrees, choosing a much narrower definition of the term that would exclude measures such as face coverings. Legal experts say her interpretation was flawed.
“If one of my students objected to this idea as their final test, I don’t know if I would agree that they received the correct analysis,” says Erin Fuse Brown, a law professor at Georgia State University.
“It’s like someone who decided the case and then tried to dress it up as a legal argument without actually doing the legal reasoning,” she added.
What is considered ‘sanitary’?
In his opinion, Mizelle says that a common way that judges decide the meaning of words in the law is to look up dictionary definitions contemporaneous with the passage of the law. In this case, it was 1944.
Mizelle says that “sanitization” can be understood as actively cleaning something or the measures to keep something clean, but ultimately settling under the old definition.
“Wearing a mask doesn’t clean anything. At most, it can trap virus droplets,” Mizelle writes. “But it doesn’t ‘sanitize’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitize’ the vehicles.”
Mizelle says her reading ability is bolstered by the fact that other words listed alongside “sanitary” in the 1944 law – such as “fumigation” or “destroy” – refer specifically to It could mean cleaning something up or trying to wipe out an epidemic.
But Fuse Brown says that while this interpretation of “hygiene” may be true for the general public, it is not how the term is used in the public health arena or understood by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Disease Control and Prevention United States, which issued the mandate.
“Hygiene is just the old public health term for taking traditional public health steps to prevent the spread of disease,” she said.
Fuse Brown points out the widespread wearing of masks in In 1918 there was an outbreak of flutook place about two and a half decades before the passage of the Public Health Services Act.
She thinks this opinion will make it difficult for the Biden administration to control the spread of COVID-19.
“The reasoning is poor, but it also has serious and serious consequences for public health,” she said.
Opinions can have a lasting effect on CDC authority
Mizelle’s comments also limit CDC’s ability to respond to public health emergencies in ways it deems appropriate, and if the opinion is approved by a federal appeals court or The US Supreme Court upheld, legal experts warn it could hamper the government’s ability to control future outbreaks.
“If this particular type of opinion has greater precedent value as it rises through the court system, if that happens, That’s big trouble for the CDC.
Mizelle has substituted her own definition of “hygiene,” says Hodge, setting aside a legal so-called “respect of the agency” forces judges to give in to the interpretation of federal agencies when the language of the law is unclear.
Mizelle also criticized the agency for not following standard rule-making processes prior to establishing the mandate. Hodge said she misunderstood how the federal government operates during the national public health emergency.
“This is really a serious deviation not only of what we’re trying to do to protect public health, but a misalignment of federal agency during emergencies,” Hodge said. .
Fuse Brown agrees, noting that the opinion has “a spectacular level of political justice activism” that “will send chills down our spines.”
“Even if we are skeptical about the agencies or even about the ability of Congress to deliver a good ruling during this time…
NPR’s Pien Huang contributed reporting to this story.
