WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is filing an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs, officials said Wednesday.

The notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.

A notice of appeal was filed in federal court in Tampa.

The CDC said in a statement Wednesday that it is its “continuing assessment that at this time an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health.”

It remained unclear whether the Biden administration would ask the appeals court to grant an emergency stay to immediately reimpose the mask mandate on public transit. An emergency stay of the lower court’s ruling would be a whiplash moment for travelers and transit workers. Most airlines and airports, many public transit systems and even ride-sharing company Uber lifted their mask-wearing requirements in the hours following Monday’s ruling.

A federal judge in Florida had struck down the national mask mandate for mass transit on Monday, leading airlines and airports to swiftly repeal their requirements that passengers wear face coverings. The Transportation Security Administration said Monday that it would it will no longer enforce the mask requirement.

The CDC had recently extended the mask mandate, which was set to expire Monday, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omicron subvariant, which is now responsible for the vast majority of U.S. cases. But the court ruling Monday had put that decision on hold.

The CDC said it will continue to monitor public health conditions to determine if a mandate would remain necessary. It said it believes the mandate is “a lawful order, well within CDC’s legal authority to protect public health.”

Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said Wednesday night that the department was filing the appeal “in light of today’s assessment by the CDC that an order requiring masking in the transportation corridor remains necessary to protect the public health.”

Biden’s administration has offered mixed messages in the wake of the Monday ruling. While officials said Americans should heed the CDC’s guidance even if it was no longer a requirement, Biden himself suggested they had more flexibility on masking-up during transit.

“That’s up to them,” Biden declared during a Tuesday visit to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The White House nonetheless continues to require face coverings for those traveling with him on Air Force One, citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Biden still is encouraging Americans to wear masks when traveling and that he had been “answering the question quite literally” a day before.

“People are not legally bound to wear masks,” she said, after the court order. “So, it is a point in time where it is up to people — it is their choice, in that regard.

After a winter surge fueled by the omicron variant that prompted record hospitalizations, the U.S. has seen a significant drop in virus spread in recent months, leading most states and cities to drop mask mandates.

But several Northeast cities have seen a rise in hospitalizations in recent weeks, leading Philadelphia to bring back its mask mandate.

The appeal drew criticism from the U.S. Travel Association, which along with other industry groups had been pressuring the Biden administration for months to end the mask mandate for travel.

“Masks were critically important during the height of the pandemic,” said Tori Emerson Barnes, the group’s executive vice president of public affairs and policy, “but with low hospitalization rates and multiple effective health tools now widely available, from boosters to therapies to high-quality air ventilation aboard aircraft, required masking on public transportation is simply out of step with the current public health landscape.”

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Since California health officials decreed the end of the mask mandate for restaurants and grocery stores last week, frustrated parents have been asking: When can their kids take their masks off at school?

They didn’t get any answers during a much anticipated press conference Monday hosted by California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly, who said the state would wait until Feb. 28 to potentially change masking rules at schools.

The California Teachers Association, one of the state’s largest unions with over 300,000 members, supported the decision to “pause and gather more information” before revising the mask mandate for schools.

But some parents and educators, who until recently supported strict mask rules in the classroom, are losing their patience.

“I really started thinking, why aren’t we talking about the masks coming off?” said Dr. Will Sheldon, an Oakland parent and a family medicine doctor. “There was no discussion of what the off-ramps are going to be.”

Concerns over education quality

Parents and educators interviewed by CalMatters said the social and emotional harms of long-term masking need to be weighed against what appear to be the minimal benefits of masking amid rising vaccination rates and receding case numbers.

Sheldon said his daughter has had a harder time making new friends because masks cover her facial expressions. But of greater concern, he said, are the kids he sees in his clinic who are deaf or have other language delays and rely on reading lips to learn speech and reading.

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“I think they were a good idea early in the pandemic,” Sheldon said. “At this point, I’m more than ready for them to change. I think we’ve gone to an extreme.”

Meanwhile, public health experts are saying masks will play a smaller role in 2022’s pandemic playbook.

“As omicron quiets down, we’re approaching a point where we can take masks off,” said Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego. “But if I had a 5- to 12- year- old who wasn’t vaccinated, I would still want them to keep the masks on until they get vaccinated. It’s not always trivial when a child gets COVID.”

High-quality, tight-fitting masks have been shown to protect against transmission, but they don’t completely eliminate the risk of getting COVID-19. And with the low risk of serious illness for kids, some parents are saying it’s time to lift the mask mandate and take a step towards normalcy.

While not all parents oppose masks in schools — CalMatters spoke to parents who thought they should embrace all measures to reduce the death count — some worry the masks are reducing their child’s enthusiasm for learning.

“I want my son to feel excited and connected,” said Patricia Johnson, an Oakland parent of a first grader. “That’s what I’ve wanted from school all along. I want him to love school.”

Jason Peplinski, the superintendent of Simi Valley Unified School District, said public health experts can’t underestimate the effect wearing masks for two years has had on kids. He hopes the mandate lifts for all students. A middle ground, he said, would be a logistical nightmare.

“What I don’t want to happen is for the governor to say if you’re vaccinated you can unmask,” Peplinski said.

“That puts the onus on school districts.”

Some teachers are also calling for an end to the mask mandate.

Bevin Abbe, a vocal music teacher at Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley, said masks have been stifling her students’ creative expression for too long. She worries that more introverted students are hiding behind their masks, delaying their social development.

Abbe said debate over masking has become heated in her county of Ventura. Her district’s teachers union declined to take a position.

“Our union has chosen to respect the different views of our membership and society, at large,” said union president Amanda Hogan. “We have not taken a position on masks in the past and are unlikely to in the future.”

Public health experts endorse masks

The California Department of Public Health issued its school mask mandate in July as most of the state’s school districts were set to return to fully in-person instruction for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The mandate placed the responsibility of enforcement on local school officials.

As the omicron surge led to record case numbers among students, teachers and staff, many schools were pushed to a breaking point. But as case numbers decline, more states are starting to lift school mask mandates and taking steps towards normalcy . Lawmakers in some more conservative states are working to ban mask mandates altogether.

Simi Valley’s Peplinski and parents opposing the mask mandate say it doesn’t make sense for a vaccinated child to be able to eat at a restaurant or shop for groceries without a mask but have to put one on in the classroom. Public health experts, however, say the comparison isn’t completely valid because education is compulsory and students spend most of their time at schools.

“If you want to go to a restaurant, that’s your choice,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. “But kids need to be in schools, and I’d like to see them protected as much as possible.”

Noymer said masks should be required at schools to eliminate the possibility of returning to virtual instruction. That said, he thinks the mandate could be lifted in the next month or so once case numbers and hospitalization rates are back down to where they were last May.

Noymer said the state could set various thresholds for case numbers, hospitalization rates and vaccination rates that would trigger an end to the mask mandate for schools. But on Monday, Ghaly provided no concrete metrics.

He said the state would continue monitoring a variety of data points for the next two weeks.

Until then, some parents will remain exasperated.

“All they did was announce that they’re having another press conference in two weeks,” said Sheldon. “It felt like they were just kicking the can down the road.”

Joe Hong | Contributed

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