Federal court issues injunction ordering Upper St. Clair to keep mask requirement in place

A federal appeals court on Sunday issued an emergency injunction ordering the Upper St. Clair School District to continue requiring students and staff to wear masks.

A group of families of medically disabled children filed a lawsuit against the district on Thursday after the school board reversed its mandatory mask mandate earlier this month.

Attorney Ken Behrend sought the injunction after U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman ruled on Friday in favor of the district.

Without the emergency order, masks would have been optional for students and staff beginning on Monday.

“The foregoing motion by appellants for emergency injunctive relief is granted on a temporary basis,” the court wrote in its emergency injunction. “A full three-judge panel of this Court will be formed worthwith to consider the motions and issue a ruling.”

The injunction requires Behrend and attorneys for the school district to file responses by 2 p.m. on Tuesday and to prepare to deliver arguments sometime later in the week, according to a copy of the order obtained by the Tribune-Review.

The lawsuit filed by Behrend on behalf of the disabled students was the result of the school board’s 7-2 vote on Jan. 10 to reverse its previous mask mandate.

The plaintiffs allege that by making masking optional, the district is putting medically fragile students at risk.

“In order to keep children in-school, every step necessary to a ‘layered approach’ for preventing the spread of covid-19, which requires universal masking, should be followed,” Behrend wrote in the request for the injunction.

Even though the lawsuit was filed on behalf of five unnamed students, it is a class-action complaint that covers all medically fragile children enrolled in the school district.

The lawsuit contends that the district currently has approximately 100 students that either have cancer or some type of autoimmune deficiency, as well as 300 more with respiratory conditions that place them at high risk for infection.

The complaint asserts that the board’s decision to end universal masking violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal laws because it fails to make reasonable accommodations that would allow the plaintiffs access to school buildings for in-person instruction.

Behrend argued that the alternatives the district offered the disabled students are discriminatory because they “involve either segregation or isolation from non-disabled children, remote cyber school or home-schooling while the non-disabled children remain in the school building.”

He said the alternatives place “disabled children in a stigmatizing bubble while in the school building, as if he or she were wearing a badge of infamy.”

Behrend noted in his lawsuit seeking the injunction that Stickman’s ruling in favor of the district on Friday said the plaintiffs “lack standing since, according to the Court, the alleged harm of increased risk of infection from covid-19 caused by a lack of mask wearing is entirely speculative.”

In response to the lawsuit filed against the district on Thursday, attorney Jocelyn Kramer told the Tribune-Review that it is not the district’s intent to put students at risk, but rather to stay within its authority.

She said masking is a public health decision and that the district’s public health organizations have declined to require them.

She said the board’s decision to lift the mask requirement also was made because all students are now eligible to be vaccinated and isolation periods have been reduced.