Attorney General Steve Marshall joined twenty other attorneys general in filing a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the mask mandate for public travel despite court rulings that it is violating the law. The attorneys general want to eradicate the unlawful mask mandate and obtain a permanent injunction against enforcement.
“Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the CDC has repeatedly overstepped its legal authority with impunity,” stated Marshall. “It has done so based upon its flawed reliance on a limited federal statute authorizing traditional quarantine measures directly related to preventing the interstate spread of the disease. Despite courts consistently ruling against the CDC’s ‘unprecedented assertion of power,’ including a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the CDC in a case brought by the Alabama Association of Realtors in 2021, the CDC remains defiant.
“After being called out for illegally prohibiting evictions and shutting down the nation’s cruise industry for over a year, the CDC continues to impose a mask mandate for traveling on non-private conveyances, including aircraft, trains, road vehicles, and ships. The CDC’s defiance of the law must be challenged, and I have joined 20 of my attorney general colleagues in filing suit against the CDC to halt this illegal mask mandate.”
In the press release, Marshall argued that the CDC’s mask mandate harms states and interferes with state laws banning forced masking.
The lawsuit argues that the CDC’s mask mandate exceeds the agency’s authority in several ways. First, the statute used to justify the mandate does not authorize economy-wide measures. Second, the statute only authorizes rules directly related to preventing the interstate spread of disease—it does not permit mask requirements for individuals who show no sign of infection.
Marshall joined attorneys general from Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia in filing the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on Tuesday.
