This newsletter is distributed by Public Health Law Watch as part of Act for Public Health, a working group of the Public Health Law Partnership that is convening to provide law and policy research, analysis, and expertise in support of public health authority.
Case updates
Monday, June 6: A former health professor at Springfield Technical Community College sued the school after she was fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds.
Tuesday, June 7: A federal court ruled that four New Jersey healthcare workers failed to show that state executive orders requiring them to stay up-to-date on their COVID-19 vaccines violated their constitutional rights.
Wednesday, June 8: A Washington judge refused to grant an injunction against Gov. Inslee’s updated rules regarding face masks and vaccine requirements.
Spotlight: Amicus brief filed in the CDC Transportation Mask Mandate case
On June 7, 2022, a group of 231 individuals, including six former CDC directors and hundreds of scholars, and 20 public health organizations, including Public Health Law Watch and the American Public Health Association, submitted an amicus brief to the Eleventh Circuit in support of reversing Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s April 2022 decision striking down CDC’s transportation mask mandate.
The brief asserts that CDC’s mask mandate is a proper exercise of its core regulatory powers to combat infectious disease spread and transmission via interstate and international travel under the Public Health Service Act, as Congress has delegated to federal public health agencies, including CDC, authority under the Act to address public health issues in a manner that individual states cannot.
The brief first presents the argument that CDC’s mask mandate is an exercise of the agency’s core regulatory function. During the crafting of the PHSA, Congress wrote the law to be broad enough to apply to any disease and to allow authorized agencies the power to take actions that in its “judgment[,] may be necessary” for the situation. The CDC mask mandate was implemented during a pandemic, and in a time where air travel, both domestic and international, has significantly grown. The mask mandate is an evidence-based mechanism backed by epidemiological findings, promoted by both domestic and global public health organizations, and separately employed by different US jurisdictions. By letting the District Court’s decision stand, CDC’s ability to safeguard the nation and apply its regulatory power to protect against interstate and international spread and transmission, including of COVID-19, will be hindered.
The amici curiae secondly argue that CDC’s mask mandate is authorized under the PHSA’s plain language based on both historical and contemporary meanings of the word “sanitation.” The brief further posits that the catchall language in the PHSA authorizing "other measures" encompasses the mask mandate, rejecting the District Court’s reasoning that the “other measures” were restricted to measures virtually identical to those previously enumerated. The brief also demonstrates how legislative history indicates Congress’ intention that the list of measures be non-exhaustive.
