Charleston parents sue to block COVID mask rule, saying ‘rights are being taken away’
A cadre of parents and a charter school teacher are suing to try and stop a mask mandate inside South Carolina’s second-largest school district and prevent further COVID-19 requirements from taking effect.
Filed Friday in Charleston County circuit court, the lawsuit is against the Charleston County School District and all nine of its school board members, along with East Cooper Montessori Charter School and the county and city of Charleston.
The suit asks a judge to find the school district, the charter school and local governments in contempt of court. The plaintiffs then want children and teachers to attend school without a mask or vaccine.
The legal challenge ignites yet another battle in the courts over pandemic policy in South Carolina.
Earlier this week, a group of City of North Charleston employees filed a lawsuit against their employer, the state’s third-largest city, after the municipality announced Sept. 2 that all of its employees must get vaccinated against COVID-19 by Nov. 5.
In that suit, the plaintiffs claim the mandate violates their rights to free expression under the South Carolina Constitution and free speech granted by the U.S. Constitution.
And Wednesday, parents sued the city of Columbia, Richland County and the Richland 1 School District over its mask requirement for students.
However, the suit filed in Charleston Friday goes a touch further than other litigation in its scope.
Along with challenging the legality of mask mandates for students, the suit also takes aim at other COVID-19 safety measures, including the school district’s quarantine policy for students as well as mask mandates and vaccine requirements for charter school employees.
Charleston County School District spokesman Andy Pruitt declined to comment on pending litigation.
“Forced masks equals forced vax,” said Charleston attorney Josh Hooser, who is representing the two sets of parents and the charter school teacher in the case. Hooser also is representing the Richland 1 parents in their suit against the capital city, Richland County and the school district over its mask requirement.
“Once you give up your liberties in one context, they can go after them in another context,” Hooser said in a phone interview Friday morning.
Parents, teacher criticize mask rules
In the suit, John and Monica Cooke, who are parents of a student at Wando High School, said their healthy child should be in the classroom, learning in person, regardless of their vaccination status.
This year, that has not been the case, they said in an affidavit submitted to the court.
“We strongly feel like our parental rights are being taken away from us by a school board and county that are wildly overstepping their responsibilities with their vaccine and masking policies,” the couple said in court documents.
The Cooke family claims their child, who plays on a sports team at the high school in Mount Pleasant, has twice had to quarantine due to school policy. On another occasion, they claim their child was “improperly forced into quarantine without proof of a close classroom contact because of a ‘better safe than sorry’ mindset.”
Other plaintiffs in the suit, Gregory and Megan Montieth, have three children enrolled in Charleston County School District.
But at the start of the school year, one of their children, who now attends Thomas Cario Middle School, was first a student at East Cooper Montessori.
The Montieth family claims their son, who was born with a birth defect and has severe ADHD, auditory processing challenges and speech challenges, was discriminated against because he was not wearing a mask.
They claim the principal, Jody Swanigan, forced their son to sit in the back of the classroom behind plexiglass on the first day of school, despite their child having an individualized education plan that requires special accommodations, like sitting at the front of the classroom to better hear the teacher.
“He was forbidden to walk around freely and was only allowed to interact with his classmates from his plexiglass cell. He had a difficult time hearing the teacher speak and was very embarrassed,” the Cooke family said in court documents. “All of this because he did not wear a mask.”
Also joining the suit is Gabrielle Sloan, a special education teacher who said she is facing termination from East Cooper Montessori Charter School for refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated.
“Teachers are supposed to teach. Medical decisions should be left to the parents and family,” Sloan said in a statement provided to the media.
Lawsuit comes amid new COVID spike
This latest legal fight also comes at a time when South Carolina finds itself in the middle of one of its worst surges of COVID-19 since the first confirmed case arrived in the Palmetto State in March 2020.
Fueled by the contagious delta variant, the rise in cases has collided with state-level policies against school mask mandates that were drafted and adopted before the spike.
Vaccines protect against serious illness or death, but do not completely prevent infection. However, no vaccine has been authorized yet by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for children under 12, leaving this population particularly vulnerable as they start a new school year.
The Charleston County School Board voted Monday to use federal money to enforce its mask requirement, a potential workaround to a controversial law in the South Carolina budget that said state money could not be used to carry out any school mask mandates.
That budget proviso is also at the center of a federal civil rights investigation.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office opened an investigation into South Carolina and four other states to determine whether their statewide prohibitions on mask mandates discriminate against students with disabilities.
The Charleston County School District’s temporary mask mandate takes effect Monday and is set to expire Oct. 15, so long as the county sees an improvement in COVID-19 cases. Parents received an alert about the enforcement Thursday.
In a statement published on the school district’s website, school board chairman the Rev. Eric Mack explained why masking was necessary.
“It remains our collective opinion that wearing face masks in school is an essential health and safety measure. Just that simple act of each of us will help prevent severe illness or death from COVID and reduce the number of students who are forced to quarantine,” Mack said, adding that the board hopes the virus transmission rate will diminish between now and Oct. 15.
“It is also our hope,” he continued, “that everyone complies with the mask requirement for the greater good of all.”
The following day, Charleston City Council passed a first reading of a mask requirement Tuesday that would apply to schools, public and private, in the city limits, along with day cares. It needs two more votes before it can go into effect.
However, the lawsuit claims the schools and the local municipalities are running afoul of state law and says parents have “a fundamental right” granted by the U.S. Constitution to make decisions concerning the care, custody and control of their children without government interference.
In an interview, Hooser, the attorney, confirmed that this lawsuit in Charleston is meant to be a preemptive strike against future COVID-19 mandates in schools, like vaccine requirements.
This story was originally published September 17, 2021 at 11:34 AM.
