U.S. health officials on Tuesday reinstated their recommendation that Americans wear masks on planes, trains and buses, despite a court ruling last month that struck down a national mask mandate on public transportation.
Americans aged two and older should wear a well-fitting masks while on public transportation, including in airports and train stations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended, citing the current spread of coronavirus and projections of future COVID-19 trends.
For months, the Transportation Security Administration had been enforcing a requirement that passengers and workers wear masks.
The government had repeatedly extended the mandate, and the latest one had been set to expire May 3, but a federal judge in Florida struck down the rule on April 18.
The same day, the TSA said it would no longer enforce the mandate.
A CDC spokesperson said, ‘As a result of a court order, the mask order is no longer in effect and is not being enforced.’
The CDC had asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision, which the department did.
On Tuesday, CDC officials declined to comment on the status of the appeal. DOJ officials did not immediately respond to a request for information.
At a Senate hearing Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested that the administration may not want to reimpose the mask mandate.
‘The appeal concerns whether the CDC has the authority to (require masks) in this pandemic or in any pandemic, which is completely distinct from whether a mask mandate ought to be applied any given day,’ Buttigieg said.
He said he agreed that based on conditions on April 13 when the mandate was extended for 15 days that it should have been allowed to expire but said it was a CDC decision.
Several airlines dropped mask mandates after US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the Biden policy on April 18, saying that the mandate – in which non-complying travelers are ‘forcibly removed from their airplane seats, denied board at the bus steps, and turned away at the train station doors’ – was akin to ‘detention and quarantine.’
United Airlines said in a statement that they will continue following the guidance from April 18 ruling and allowing passengers to go maskless as they please.
‘While this means that our employees are no longer required to wear a mask – and no longer have to enforce a mask requirement for most of the flying public – they will be able to wear masks if they choose to do so, as the CDC continues to strongly recommend wearing a mask on public transit’ a United spokesperson said.
Following the repeal of the mandate, United CEO Jack Kirby said he doesn’t think the federal mask mandate will ever return.
‘I think it’s very unlikely that a mask mandate is going to come back anytime in the foreseeable future,’ Kirby told the Today Show the week the mandate ended. ‘We’re getting back to living life as normal.’
In the wake of the April 18 ruling, the national train line Amtrak stopped enforcing the mask mandate but said passengers were still welcomed to wear their masks as a preventive measure against COVID-19.
This is an excerpt from Daily Mail.
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