The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday dismissed as moot two lawsuits against local school districts over mask mandates.
The court said in its order that the complaints against the Upper St. Clair and North Allegheny school districts no longer present a controversy because Allegheny County isn’t deemed to be in the “high” risk category of covid-19 transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s revised guidelines issued last week.
As such, healthy people in the county are no longer advised to wear masks in public.
The plaintiffs were seeking an order requiring masks in schools after the boards in both districts made masking optional. The two cases were before two different judges in the Western District of Pennsylvania, and they got conflicting results.
The parties then appealed to the Third Circuit appellate court, which had combined the cases and set them for argument on March 24.
However, that argument is no longer necessary.
“We agree with the parties that the absence of a live controversy renders this matter moot,” the court wrote.
It remanded the complaints to the district court in Pittsburgh with orders to close them.
