Kids in Philly and the rest of the state could soon be attending classes without wearing face masks after Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court announced Friday they were killing Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s mandate.
In the decision, the justices ruled that mask mandates applied to child care facilities were “not valid” because they were imposed without legal authorization by the state’s acting health secretary Alison Beam.
This upholds a lower court’s findings that Beam didn’t follow state laws regarding instituting regulation, and that the mandate was not enacted under an existing disaster emergency.
Under the new Supreme Court ruling, schools and districts may impose their own masking requirements to keep children’s faces covered.
Democrats hold the majority in the state Supreme Court, which makes the decision even more far reaching because it cannot easily be blamed on partisanship.