The parents of four medically fragile students in the Cobb County School District who filed a federal lawsuit in 2021 to impose a mask mandate and other COVID-19 mitigation measures have won a round in court.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta in late December reversed a lower court ruling in November 2021 that denied the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction in their attempt to mandate masks and other precautions in order for the affected students to safely attend classes in-person.
The ruling, issued by a three-judge panel (you can read it here), said the Cobb school district failed to make “reasonable modifications or accommodations” under guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for those students to attend classes at their home schools.
The parents, including Sara Cavorley of East Cobb, filed the lawsuit in October 2021, claiming that their childrens’ educational rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act were being denied when the Cobb school district dropped its mask mandate for the 2021-22 school year.
Cavorley said her son Leland, then 13, was unable to attend classes at Simpson Middle School because he suffers from leukemia. In an East Cobb News profile published before the lawsuit, Cavorley explained how her other children, who were attending classes in person at schools without mask mandates, worried they would expose Leland to COVID-19.
After requiring masks for the 2020-21 school year, the Cobb school district—which previously had been sued by parents opposing the mandates—made them optional, but offered parents a virtual learning program.
Cavorley said she was unaware of that option, and eventually withdrew her children from in-person classes, although the deadline to sign up for online learning had passed.
In September 2021, the Cobb Board of Health, in a special-called meeting, approved a measure urging schools to follow CDC COVID-19 measures, including universal masking.
But Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale, a member of the health board, abstained from voting, saying the Cobb school district was following all but the mask recommendations, and he hadn’t had time to see the revised resolution before the meeting.
In his August 2021 decision to drop the mask mandate, Ragsdale said that some areas with mandated masks in schools have no lower COVID-19 figures than those without mandates, and that he wanted to leave it to parents to decide what is best for their families.
The Cobb school district said in its response to the suit that the parents were “simply complaining about not receiving their preferred educational services—not a deprivation of access to education altogether.”
A federal district judge in Atlanta agreed, and denied the restraining order on the grounds that the plaintiffs were not likely to win their case on the merits.
The appeals court rejected the Cobb school district’s claim that the lawsuit was moot, saying the issue is about more than a mask mandate.
The case is being remanded back to the district court, which must “analyze whether virtual schooling is a reasonable accommodation for in-person schooling, not education in general,” the appeals court ruling states.
“The students argued that CCSD ignored those recommendations and continues to disregard CDC guidance in this respect,” the ruling concludes. “Therefore, this remains a live controversy.”
The suit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose senior staff attorney, Eugene Choi, said in a statement this week that “school districts cannot relegate students with disabilities to home virtual programs because of their disabilities. Instead, schools must make reasonable accommodations and modifications so that students with disabilities can safely and meaningfully access their schools in-person.”
Last month, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced a settlement involving a similar lawsuit that acknowledged that universal masking is a “reasonable modification” under the ADA, after he previously had banned mask mandates in schools.
The settlement affects 10 school districts, which must determine whether masks would be required, or they would make other modifications to satisfy the rights of the students with disabilities.
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An example of the board putting
MAGA Political views ahead of doing what’s right.
Young kids are never going to wear their masks correctly. That is cruel to force other kids to restrict their breathing for several hours per day, I get claustrophobic with a mask and so do many others. We have lived for hundreds of years with viruses without masking. This is going to cause serious issues for speech delays and language problems.