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Airplane passengers are no longer required to wear masks on planes and other forms of transit after a judge knocked down a mandate requiring it. Several airlines and other transportation providers quickly followed her lead, and passengers applauded the ruling. But Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman questions the timing of U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s decision as well as her motive.
The reasoning she gave for why the mandate had to go is that the CDC’s authority to enforce rules for sanitation, she says, only apply to the sanitation of the airplane. And she wrote, correctly under this understanding, if the CDC is allowed to weigh in on how to sanitize planes, a mask doesn’t in a literal sense, sanitize the plane. And so, there were a couple more provisions, but this was a big piece of it. The CDC overstepped its authority.
What is fascinating to me about that justification is that that justification would’ve been valid at any time during the pandemic.
And yet the judge issued the ruling within just a couple of weeks of when the mask mandate was expected to end anyway. Originally it was Apr. 18 and extended to May 3.
So some part of me wonders whether this is a judge who says, “I wouldn’t do this in the middle of the pandemic when there’s no end in sight for the masking. Now that we see when it would probably end anyway, I’m going to score some political points, mostly with conservatives.”
Although many people, myself included, are tired of masks, but we want to understand whether they’re helping us in some way before we remove them.
She might have said, “This is a really great opportunity to get my name in the news and score some political points.”
I think that that is something that is quite plausible in this particular case.
