Didn’t Joe say it’s over?
According to a Fox News report, the Biden Administration is looking to throw masks back on air travelers; the DOJ is currently fighting it out in court on behalf of the CDC in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
A federal judge in Florida struck down the mandate last April.
“The Department continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health. That is an important authority the Department will continue to work to preserve,” DOJ said in a statement at the time of the ruling.
The legal fight comes after President Biden himself declared the pandemic “over” at the Detroit Auto Show in September.
“The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it,” Biden said in a CBS interview at the time. “If you notice, no one’s wearing a mask, everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”
From Fox News:
The fight to keep mask mandates is not a popular one among travel industry groups. The U.S. Travel Association, for example, praised the ruling from the Florida judge striking down the mandate.
“The current decision to halt enforcement of the federal mask mandate effectively returns the choice of mask usage on planes and other forms of public transportation to travelers and travel industry workers, a further step toward endemic management of COVID,” Tori Emerson Barnes, the associations executive vice president, said at the time.
The Health Freedom Defense Fund (HDFD), a medical rights advocacy group that initially sued the Biden administration in July 2021, will make the argument in court Tuesday that the order requiring all travelers to wear masks “lacks not only any rooting in federal statutes, but it also violated existing federal law in how it was promulgated. The mandate also suffers from an inconsistent application of sound science.”
More over at Fox News:
DOJ defending mask mandate on planes months after Biden said pandemic is ‘over’ https://t.co/jsxQB30eMg
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) January 17, 2023
