Mask Policy ‘Compliant’ With Florida Law, School Board Says

SARASOTA COUNTY, FL — After the Florida Department of Education threatened to withhold salaries for members of the Sarasota County School Board because of the district’s mandatory mask mandate, the board said it stands by its mask requirements for students, staff, visitors and vendors.

In a letter sent to Richard Corcoran, the state’s education commissioner, Wednesday on behalf of the school board, attorney Daniel J. DeLeo said the board “contend(s) that its emergency face mask policy… is both lawful and compliant with the recently enacted HB 241 (2021) – the Parents’ Bill of Rights.”

The Sarasota County School Board approved the emergency mask mandate Aug. 20 as COVID-19 cases surged in the community and throughout the state. The district was one of several across the state — including those in Alachua, Broward, Duval, Indian River, Leon, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Orange and Palm Beach counties — to enact an emergency mask requirements at the start of the 2021-22 school year despite an executive order from Gov. Ron DeSantis banning mask mandates for the schools.

On Friday, a judge sided with a group of parents who sued the governor over his executive order. Judge John Cooper ruled his order unconstitutional, clearing the way for school districts to issue mask mandates for its students and staff. Cooper's ruling limits the state's ability to enforce some rules related to district mask mandates, saying this enforcement violates the Parents' Bill of Rights, which went into effect in July.

Despite the ruling, DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education have indicated they aren’t giving up and plan to appeal the decision.

Since Cooper’s ruling, the FDOE has also been targeting districts with mask mandates, threatening to withhold school board salaries in Alachua, Broward, Hillsborough and Sarasota counties. The boards in Hillsborough and Sarasota counties were given a deadline of Wednesday at 5 p.m. to comply with the Florida Department of Health's emergency rule 64DER21-12.

In his letter to Corcoran, DeLeo said one of the statutes of the Parents’ Bill of Rights “creates a statutory framework for evaluating the interplay between fundamental parental rights and conflicting governmental actions.”

This Florida Statue, 1014.03, prohibits governmental institutions, including school boards from “infring(ing) on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health of his or her minor child without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and that such action is narrowly tailored and is not otherwise served by less restrictive means.”

The attorney argued that Sarasota County’s emergency mask policy complies with this standard, while the DOH’s emergency rule “inadequately implements the same statutory provision.”

DeLeo added, “Specifically, the emergency DOH rule – which requires absolute parental opt out to face mask mandates without satisfaction of any preconditions – is unlawful because it wholly fails to consider a school board’s constitutional and statutory obligations to govern in furtherance of student health, safety and welfare during a global pandemic. In other words, the (district’s) emergency policy is within the lawful parameters of the (Parents’ Bill of Rights) framework while the emergency DOH rule — at least as it is interpreted by DOE — is not.”

He added that “because the emergency DOH rule fails to account for a school board’s right to enact procedures that conflict with fundamental parental rights when warranted by compelling interests, it is arbitrary, overbroad in its application, beyond or inconsistent with delegated authority, ultra vires, and, as a result, unlawful.”

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His letter also contends that it was “compelling” and “reasonable” for the Sarasota County School Board to enact its emergency policy because of “the immediate and recent threat to student health, safety and welfare posed by COVID-19 in Florida and Sarasota County.”

DeLeo said the school board and Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen asked the Department of Education “to reconsider its position that the emergency policy is inconsistent and non-compliant with the DOH emergency rule, cease any corresponding investigation and halt the imposition of any corresponding sanctions.”

Read the full letter from the Sarasota County School Board’s attorney to Florida’s Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran below: