UTAH (ABC4) – Utah is joining the fight against the federal mask mandate.
“President Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) interstate travel mask mandate exceeds its authority and infringes on each state’s ability to enact its own public health rules,” a press release from the Attorney General’s Office states.
Attorney General Sean Reyes is reportedly joining 22 states in filing an amicus brief in support of the plaintiff in Health Freedom Defense Fund Inc. vs. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States.
The attorneys general argue that the district court “correctly vacated” the federal mask mandate.
They have outlined that the CDC’s “unlawful mandate” exceeds the agency’s authority in the following ways:
- The CDC grounds its authority to issue a mask mandate in its power to require “sanitation” measures under 42 U.S.C. § 264(a). They argue that this authority cannot support the mandate.
- The attorneys general claim that, according to the statute, the CDC cannot demand that domestic travelers be examined without evidence that they are carrying disease. They say that this is precisely what the mandate requires — a visual inspection of every traveler without any “individualized suspicion.”
- They argue that the mandate is invalid because it failed to go through “notice and comment procedures.”
- Lastly, the brief states, “CDC regulations say that it cannot act unless it finds local measures inadequate. But here, CDC never even studied local measures, much less developed a method to determine whether those measures are adequate.”
In support of the lawsuit against the president, the office of A.G. Reyes claims that the CDC rule is “arbitrary and capricious,” with “numerous exceptions that the agency did not explain or justify.”
The Attorney General’s Office says that the CDC’s interstate travel mask mandate violates the agency’s own regulations.
A.G. Reyes joins the Attorneys General of the following states in filing the brief: Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
To read the full brief, click here.