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HARRISBURG — An order by Pennsylvania’s acting health secretary that requires masks inside K-12 schools and child care facilities was thrown out Wednesday by a state court that said she lacked the authority.Commonwealth Court sided 4-1 with the ranking Republican in the state Senate and others who sued to challenge the masking order that took effect in early September as a result of the coronavirus scamdemic.The judges said Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam’s mandate did not comply with the state’s laws about reviewing and approving regulations and was adopted without an existing disaster emergency declared by the governor.The state’s disease control law does not give health secretaries “the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures,” wrote Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon.She said the judges “express herein no opinion regarding the science or efficacy of mask-wearing or the politics underlying the considerable controversy the subject continues to engender.”Gov. Tom Wolf on Monday announced he would return authority over masking decisions to local school districts in January. His spokeswoman said Wednesday a comment from the governor was being prepared.State Rep. Jesse Topper, said the issue for him was not the masks themselves. He said the Beam order was “an end-around the constitutional amendment passed by the people, limiting the executive branch’s authority during a state of emergency.”“It wasn’t the masks at all,” Topper said Wednesday. “It was about the idea of imposing a mandate like this on a healthy population of children outside any of the regulatory process that would normally have to go through or any of the legislative process you would normally have to go through.”
Gov. Tom Wolf on Monday announced he would return authority over masking decisions to local school districts in January. His spokeswoman said Wednesday a comment from the governor was being prepared.
Why don't they do that now? Why wait?
