Florida judge scraps Joe Biden’s mask mandate

A US judge has quashed the Biden administration’s mask mandate for planes, buses, taxis, trains and airports.

Train passengers will no longer be required to wear masks on America’s transport system. Picture: AFP

A US judge has quashed the Biden administration’s mask mandate for planes, buses, taxis, trains and airports, causing confusion among travellers and paving the way for a legal showdown if the US government appeals to maintain the increasingly unpopular policy.

Florida District Court judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that determines the Biden administration’s Covid-19 rules, didn’t have the authority to ­require passengers to wear masks.

“Our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends,” Judge Mizelle wrote, arguing a 1944 law giving Washington the power to make rules about “sanitation” did not extend to mandatory masking.

“Wearing a mask cleans nothing. At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitises’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitises’ the conveyance,” the Tampa judge wrote in her 59-page judgment.

Passengers have been required to wear masks on public transport in the US since early last year, under federal regulations that have been repeatedly extended.

While indoor mask mandates have been dropped in the most US states and counties, the CDC said it needed to extend the public transport mandate to investigate the new Omicron “stealth” variant, which was fuelling a seventh wave of Covid-19 across the US.

For the first time since October, Covid-19 cases have begun to rise again across the US, up 39 per cent to about 37,000 a day over the past two weeks.

“This is obviously a disappointing decision. The CDC continues recommending wearing a mask in public transit,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday (Tuesday AEST), stopping short of signalling an appeal.

The Transport Security Administration, which governs US airports, said it would no longer enforce the mask mandate until it had more clarity on the administration’s position.

Critics of the verdict seized on the 35-year-old judge’s appointment by Donald Trump in the last weeks of his presidency as evidence of her inexperience and political bias in favour of Republicans.

America’s airport regulator said it would no longer enforce the mask mandate. Picture: AFP

“A Trump-appointed judge is obstructing our pandemic response and putting the most vulnerable at risk,” said Democrat senator Ed Markey.

Republican senator Chuck Grassley tweeted that the decision was “so important to protect individual liberty and restrain government overreach”.

A majority of the Senate, ­including eight Democrats, voted to overturn the mandate last month before Speaker Nancy ­Pelosi refused to consider the motion in the House of Representatives.

The plaintiffs, the Health Freedom Defence Fund, an Idaho-based action group argues against mask and vaccine mandates. Two disgruntled Florida residents ­argued the rule was “arbitrary and capricious”.

Last month the chief executives of the largest US airlines pleaded with the Biden administration to scrap the mask requirement, which had been difficult to enforce and a source of fights ­between staff and passengers.

“It makes no sense that people are still required to wear masks on aeroplanes, yet are allowed to congregate in crowded restaurants, schools and at sporting events without masks, despite none of these venues having the protective air filtration system that aircraft do,” they said in a letter to the White House.

The court’s decision was the second legal blow to the Biden ­administration’s Covid-19 policies after the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision in January, struck down the government’s vaccine mandate for private-sector workers in firms with 100 employees or more.

Mandatory masking has ­become an divisive political issue across the US as the patchwork of changing Covid-19 restrictions ­ approach their 26th month.

The share of Americans who support mask mandates dropped below 50 per cent of the first time since the pandemic began in early 2020, according to an Ipsos poll earlier this month.

Separately, the CDC on Monday removed all nations, including Australia, that remained on its most dangerous “do not travel” list owing to Covid-19 cases.

Australia and New Zealand ­remain in the “high” category though, meaning only American travellers “up to date” with their Covid-19 vaccines should risk travelling there.