Hundreds of Parents File Suit Over School Masks and Quarantines
Parents and Speak for Students members rally July 26, 2021, outside Silver Creek Elementary in Troy, Illinois, ahead of a Triad Unit 2 School Board meeting. On Wednesday, parents from 145 Illinois school districts filed a class-action lawsuit over mask requirements. (Photo credit: Belleville News Democrat)
Parents from almost 150 school districts across the state have filed a class-action lawsuit challenging Governor JB Pritzker’s mask requirements and quarantine policies in schools via executive order.
The suit is being brought by Greenville-area attorney Tom DeVore, who has been filing suits against Pritzker’s constitutional authority since the beginning of the pandemic.
More from the Belleville News-Democrat:
Many school districts saw protests from parents over the summer around mask mandates, both before and after Pritzker’s executive order. While large, organized demonstrations have become less common further into the school year, some parents are still regularly attending school board meetings to advocate against the mask mandate during public comment.
In several school districts, DeVore has secured temporary restraining orders for students against their school districts, meaning they could attend school without a mask. Many of the parents who already received temporary restraining orders for their children, including parents in Bond 2 and Carlyle 1, are listed again on the class-action lawsuit. The temporary restraining orders were limited to 30 days before an extension would need to be filed to continue school without masks. Two of the metro-east school districts named as defendants, Red Bud CUSD 132 and Carlyle CUSD 1, already defied Pritzker’s executive order at the beginning of the school year. ISBE sent both districts — and dozens of others around the state — letters indicating they were being put on probation for noncompliance; Red Bud and Carlyle changed course to require masks and follow the state mandate.
Asked about DeVore’s suits at an unrelated event in Bloomington-Normal Thursday, Governor JB Pritzker called the suit the latest in a line of “ridiculous lawsuits that are making people less safe.”
“He’s a grifter who is taking money from parents who are being taken advantage of,” Pritzker said. “We are trying to keep kids and parents and grandparents and teachers and everybody that’s in the community of the school safe. That’s my job as Governor. I have to say that going around and suing school districts and the Governor and the Attorney General and everybody else in order to keep people less safe, that makes zero sense to me. So we’re gonna push back as hard as we can.”
The suit was filed in Macoupin County.
