On Nov. 8, Gov. Tom Wolf announced that Pennsylvania schools could set their own mask policies as of Jan. 17, opening the door for districts where parents have bristled under the state requirement to ease or eliminate the demand that students, staff and visitors mask up in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
But on Wednesday, the Commonwealth Court ruled that Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam didn’t really have the power to issue that requirement for schools and child care centers. While it might seem that the policy would be immediately pulled and schools free to make their own plans two months earlier than expected, that didn’t happen.
Instead, the Wolf camp is appealing the court ruling.
Why?
What is the difference in two months? Will fighting this through more layers of courts and appeals just delay what the governor already has promised while adding more time and money to the state’s litigation over pandemic responses?
Legal authorities point to something that has nothing to do with the masks at all. Instead, it’s all about power and politics.
At the core is the issue that often pushes things into the state’s highest courts: precedent. That is when a court ruling decides what the legal basis of a case is, establishing a road map for future cases that will tread the same ground. It is why lawyers arguing about privacy will cite Griswold v. Connecticut or a case about equality could hang on Brown v. the Board of Education.
Precedent is more important than the masks for this case because the governor has more at stake than just a rule he already was planning to roll back.
If the Commonwealth Court ruling stands, it will be yet another slice into the gubernatorial powers that already have taken a beating this year. In May, voters decided to limit the governor’s ability to declare emergencies by requiring the Legislature to agree to extensions.
Then on Nov. 9, House Speaker Bryan Cutler and state Sen. Ryan Aument, both Lancaster Republicans, announced plans to introduce legislation that would give the Legislature even more authority, letting lawmakers box gubernatorial orders to just 21 days unless lawmakers agree.
They are just the latest moves in an ongoing chess game between the sides, attempting to trap each other in corners where one side can do nothing, leaving the other to run the board.
The state would run a lot better if the executive and legislative branches — and both Wolf’s Democrats and the Legislature’s majority Republicans — spent their time focusing on doing their jobs rather than jockeying for position.
— The Tribune-Review (TNS)
