After SC Supreme Court ruling, what will lawmakers do about mask mandate law in schools?
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COVID-19 mask news in Midlands schools
Curious to learn what local schools are doing about face masks as COVID-19 rises in South Carolina? Here’s a roundup of the latest updates from elementary schools to universities around the state.
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After the state Supreme Court struck down Columbia’s mask mandate in elementary and middle schools on Thursday, state lawmakers must decide whether to address their one-year budget provision that intends to prevent school mask mandates.
Any attempt to change it would require consensus by both chambers of the General Assembly, which isn’t there.
The state Supreme Court ruled that the city of Columbia’s school mask mandate violated the state law. But the court has yet to rule on a lawsuit filed by the Richland 2 school district, which challenges the law against school mask mandates itself. Both cases revolve around the one-year measure in the state budget that says state funds can’t be used to enforce mask mandates in schools.
“I suspect what’s going to happen is if the second opinion is like the first one, what this does is it puts this issue squarely before the Legislature, which is where it should be anyway,” said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield. “The Legislature adopted this proviso. It’s up to the Legislature to stick with it or reconsider it.”
The provision says state money cannot be used to enforce a mask mandate.
But the city of Columbia went ahead and required face masks in day cares, elementary and middle schools with the intention to slow the spread of COVID-19 amid the surge of the delta variant. Several South Carolina school districts have temporarily shifted to virtual learning because of high COVID-19 case counts.
State Rep. Stewart Jones, R-Laurens, who added the proviso to the budget in June, was confident ahead of the Supreme Court decision that the K-12 provision would be upheld.
“I believe the most local you can get is with the individual,” Jones said. “It comes to individual freedoms. We’re protecting every individual’s ability to decide if they want to wear a mask, and really it’s up to parents, in my view.”
Any changes to the state budget proviso would require a two-thirds vote by both chambers to open a legislative agreement called a Sine Die resolution, which says what lawmakers can work on after the end of the session in May.
In the upper chamber, senators also could have to overcome a filibuster to possibly make changes to the proviso.
And if both chambers adopted a change, they probably would need to overcome a possible veto from Gov. Henry McMaster, Massey said.
“There have been a lot of conversations about this, and I think it’s fluid. But as far I can tell right now, the votes are not there on the Senate side to repeal the proviso,” Massey said.
House Majority Leader Gary Simrill, R-York, who said he agreed with court’s ruling, said there’s still no consensus for the lawmakers address the provision.
But he did recommend people take precautions against the coronavirus, including “strongly” recommending that people get vaccinated and wear masks indoors, including in schools.
But, he said, the state’s ban on school mask mandates “is the law. It has been challenged, in several cases. One is, I think the ACLU has a federal lawsuit against the governor,” Simrill said. “Until such time as that federal lawsuit is heard or the other lawsuit is heard at the state level, then that law stands.”
It is doubtful McMaster would support a change to the proviso. He repeatedly has said he believes parents should make the decision on whether their children wear masks in schools.
“Any rule, any law, any compulsion to require a child to wear a mask over the objection of their parents is wrong,” the governor said when asked how he would handle legislation on masks if it reached his desk.
The proviso was passed in early June, a time when COVID-19 cases were waning and it appeared the state had put the worst of the pandemic behind it.
The Senate Democratic caucuses had no comment on Thursday’s Supreme Court decision.
State Rep. Leon Stavrinakis, D-Charleston, who has been pushing the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to issue a mask mandate in schools, said he was surprised the city of Columbia relied on school officials to help enforce the city mandate in its ordinance.
The city ordinance said any school employee “has the authority and ability to ensure that the requirements of (the) ordinance are met while the school or business is open.”
Stavrinakis said he thinks there’s a way to get students and staff to wear masks in school buildings without using state funds. Third parties could be hired with non-state dollars to enforce a mandate, as long as teachers and school staff don’t participate in enforcing the requirement.
“Two of those (Supreme Court) justices went out of their way to say this is not a mask ban, which is what I’ve been saying, so there’s a way to do it if you just avoid the funding problem,” Stavrinakis said.
“This was a ruling on a narrow legal issue. This case was about the approach taken by the City of Columbia to involve teachers, which led to the decision today,” Stavrinakis said in a later statement. “While cities cannot do what Columbia did, there is still a path forward. School districts can take action to protect their students. The legislature can act by repealing this proviso, once and for all. DHEC can take action by issuing an order, which they are authorized to do under state law. Protecting South Carolina’s kids is worth the effort, whether that means another trip to the State House or the courthouse, if necessary.”
