OMG, y'all...the people who think mask mandates violate their Constitutional rights

[Ginevra]

I can't with these folks. 

Heard today: someone who wants to hire a lawyer to remove the mask mandate that is "violating their child's Constitutional right to breath clean air." (Which Article is that, exactly...) 

Because I get incoming calls to the law firm, I get all the strange and sometimes amusing people who think they have a case. In any case (pun intended), we don't do Civil Rights law here. But good grief on the caller today who has pages of "research" showing how masks worn by kids will cause brain damage and dementia and a billion other things. She was so hopped up on what she wanted to say, I could barely even get a word in to tell her this is not the type of law firm she needs, much less to tell her she will not succeed even if she does find the right type of lawyer. 

So much more nonsense I could say, but in the interest of confidentiality, I won't. Just...ugh. People believe the nutiest things. 

[Faith-manor]

16 minutes ago, Quill said:

I can't with these folks. 

Heard today: someone who wants to hire a lawyer to remove the mask mandate that is "violating their child's Constitutional right to breath clean air." (Which Article is that, exactly...) 

Because I get incoming calls to the law firm, I get all the strange and sometimes amusing people who think they have a case. In any case (pun intended), we don't do Civil Rights law here. But good grief on the caller today who has pages of "research" showing how masks worn by kids will cause brain damage and dementia and a billion other things. She was so hopped up on what she wanted to say, I could barely even get a word in to tell her this is not the type of law firm she needs, much less to tell her she will not succeed even if she does find the right type of lawyer. 

So much more nonsense I could say, but in the interest of confidentiality, I won't. Just...ugh. People believe the nutiest things. 

I know. It is stunningly crazy out there. I love the clean air bit! Maybe if she is so worried about her children's air, she ought to fight to get super fund sites cleaned up, and promote alternative energy. 

[itsheresomewhere]

1 minute ago, Faith-manor said:

I know. It is stunningly crazy out there. I love the clean air bit! Maybe if she is so worried about her children's air, she ought to fight to get super fund sites cleaned up, and promote alternative energy. 

The fresh/free air people here crack me up.  I love that one group that meets in the park next to a superfund site.  

[Faith-manor]

2 minutes ago, itsheresomewhere said:

The fresh/free air people here crack me up.  I love that one group that meets in the park next to a superfund site.  

🤔😜🙄😂

[Katy]

“Ooops, I think the call dropped.”

[Pam in CT]

28 minutes ago, Quill said:

...Heard today: someone who wants to hire a lawyer to remove the mask mandate that is "violating their child's Constitutional right to breath clean air." (Which Article is that, exactly...) ...

LOL to the bolded.

It truly is remarkable, just how often "it's against the Constitution" is understood to be a synonym for "this really irritates me."

[MercyA]

And there's no reasoning with them. No reason, logic, information that seems to get through. Their minds are made up. Sad.

[SKL]

I think it depends on the mask mandate.  I don't consider it a violation of my rights if a location's owner or manager institutes a mask mandate.  That includes school superintendents, governments running bus lines, our local grocery store owner, or my next-door neighbor wrt his house.  However, there are some entities that do not have a constitutional right to decide who masks in places they neither own nor manage.

[Kassia]

9 minutes ago, MercyA said:

And there's no reasoning with them. No reason, logic, information that seems to get through. Their minds are made up. Sad.

That's what gets me.  It's rampant here - so much so that they got our county health commissioner fired after he pushed for masks to be mandated in the schools.  I'm open-minded and am interested in their reasoning, but so much of it doesn't make any sense and yet they stick to it and stick together.  

[Faith-manor]

4 minutes ago, Kassia said:

That's what gets me.  It's rampant here - so much so that they got our county health commissioner fired after he pushed for masks to be mandated in the schools.  I'm open-minded and am interested in their reasoning, but so much of it doesn't make any sense and yet they stick to it and stick together.  

For me it is about the same as trying to talk with flat earthers. 😯😜 I just can't make heads nor tails of it, and in my head I begin to hear, "Jibber jabber jibber jabber". 

Our county health department director was harassed into quitting because she supported masks. The new flap is th county commissioners are trying to hire someone for the job with zero experience or degrees related to public health. She doesn't meet any of the requirements outlined by the state so they want to sue the state for the right to put an unqualified human in the driver's seat for public health policy during a pandemic. This.is.not.going to.end.well.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, SKL said:

I think it depends on the mask mandate.  I don't consider it a violation of my rights if a location's owner or manager institutes a mask mandate.  That includes school superintendents, governments running bus lines, our local grocery store owner, or my next-door neighbor wrt his house.  However, there are some entities that do not have a constitutional right to decide who masks in places they neither own nor manage.

Legally speaking, what would be an example?

The caller was calling about schools. 

[SKL]

5 minutes ago, Quill said:

Legally speaking, what would be an example?

The caller was calling about schools. 

Well, a real-life example would be when a governor mandated masks to be worn whenever anyone in the state was indoors in any non-residential building, regardless of whether or not there was another person anywhere else in the building.

I do think superintendents should have a right to mandate masks in their schools.  I don't know for sure whether or not every state's laws support this.  I'm sure the laws were not written with Covid in mind.

What did the caller say when you asked what article(s) of the Constitution they believed to be infringed?

[regentrude]

Does asking women to wear a shirt also violate the constitution? There's much less justification for such a rule, as breasts do not spread contagion.

[Faith-manor]

2 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

You know I think I could get on board a clean that a child has a constitutional right to breath clean air. I'd add to that a constitutional right to drink clean water. 

That lady is really not going to like what the ramifications from that one. Be careful what you wish for...

 

Agreed. I think clean air and water are basic human rights. The fall out of actually providing that would leave a certain element of the population SEETHING!

It is a crazy maker out there folks. Be careful to whom you say, "How's it going?" Cuz, YOWZA!

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, SKL said:

Well, a real-life example would be when a governor mandated masks to be worn whenever anyone in the state was indoors in any non-residential building, regardless of whether or not there was another person anywhere else in the building.

I do think superintendents should have a right to mandate masks in their schools.  I don't know for sure whether or not every state's laws support this.  I'm sure the laws were not written with Covid in mind.

What did the caller say when you asked what article(s) of the Constitution they believed to be infringed?

I never got that far. It is what I would have liked to say. She ranted and raved for twenty minutes; I barely spoke an actual word to her. I basically hung up on her, interrupting her to say (for the second time) that she needs a Civil Rights attorney and we don't do that kind of law.  She was still ranting when I just hung up. 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Does asking women to wear a shirt also violate the constitution? There's much less justification for such a rule, as breasts do not spread contagion.

Right??

There were actually numerous things I was prepared to talk about as to why there is (very long) precedent on requiring (anything). I have actually gone into those before with more reasonable callers.  But, as I said, I never got that far. When it became clear she just wanted a captive audience so she could beat my ears with nonsense, I said we don't do that kind of law and hung up. 

[Corraleno]

Did you know that having medical power of attorney for someone legally gives you prescribing rights for that person, and healthcare providers have to do whatever you say? I saw some seriously crazypants posts the other day, in which a woman described calling the ICU 4-5 times a day demanding that her husband be given food, Sprite, and megadoses of intravenous Vitamin C and zinc. She said the nurses kept lying to her that he couldn't have anything by mouth due to the risk of aspiration and the doctor could not prescribe megadose vitamins, and she just kept yelling that she had power of attorney so they had to do whatever she said. And of course when he died it was the fault of the evil healthcare workers who illegally defied her orders. Because he totally would have made it if he'd just had a sandwich, a can of Sprite, and 50 grams/day of Vitamin C!

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

Did you know that having medical power of attorney for someone legally gives you prescribing rights for that person, and healthcare providers have to do whatever you say? I saw some seriously crazypants posts the other day, in which a woman described calling the ICU 4-5 times a day demanding that her husband be given food, Sprite, and megadoses of intravenous Vitamin C and zinc. She said the nurses kept lying to her that he couldn't have anything by mouth due to the risk of aspiration and the doctor could not prescribe megadose vitamins, and she just kept yelling that she had power of attorney so they had to do whatever she said. And of course when he died it was the fault of the evil healthcare workers who illegally defied her orders. Because he totally would have made it if he'd just had a sandwich, a can of Sprite, and 50 grams/day of Vitamin C!

Oh, man...

I can totally imagine...Medicine is similar to law in that people think they know about it because they watched every episode of ER or Matlock. 

[plansrme]

The true Constitutional argument is over whether governors, mayors, the CDC, the TSA, etc., have the authority to issue mask mandates without following the relevant rule-making process. That is an issue under the federal and state constitutions, federal statutes, state statutes, etc., all the way down to local ordinances. We are not (or did not used to be) run by a bunch of dictators. 

[JustEm]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

I can't with these folks. 

Heard today: someone who wants to hire a lawyer to remove the mask mandate that is "violating their child's Constitutional right to breath clean air." (Which Article is that, exactly...) 

Because I get incoming calls to the law firm, I get all the strange and sometimes amusing people who think they have a case. In any case (pun intended), we don't do Civil Rights law here. But good grief on the caller today who has pages of "research" showing how masks worn by kids will cause brain damage and dementia and a billion other things. She was so hopped up on what she wanted to say, I could barely even get a word in to tell her this is not the type of law firm she needs, much less to tell her she will not succeed even if she does find the right type of lawyer. 

So much more nonsense I could say, but in the interest of confidentiality, I won't. Just...ugh. People believe the nutiest things. 

Did my aunt call you!?!?!?🙄 I finally got her to shut up when I told her that if she was so concerned about the health of children than she should wear her mask so those kids' parents felt a bit safer out in public and since she didn't have kids she should spend more time listening to the worried parents than ranting at them

[HS Mom in NC]

Yeah, I don't take seriously cries against government regulation by parents whose kids are in government schools.  Or the cries against socialism from people whose children are in the single most socialistic entity ever in the US: public school.  I spend a lot of energy refraining from saying, "Hon, when you take government services, you get government regulation.  It's a packaged deal.  Wanna do it 100% your way?  Homeschool on your own dime. "

[Pam in CT]

re "right to __________" vs "Constitutional right to __________"

15 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

You know I think I could get on board a clean that a child has a constitutional right to breathe clean air. I'd add to that a constitutional right to drink clean water. ..

I could get on board as well, with an ethical right to _____ or a human right to _______.  I'd add "basic health care" and "safe housing" as well.

Hard pressed to cite the substantiating Article in the Constitution, though.  IANAL, and perhaps the right scholar could glimpse the midrash between the lines; and other scholars could squint a different interpretation.

But that's what I mean by conflating "Muh Constitutional Right!!" with "I Hate This." 

[Faith-manor]

8 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

Did you know that having medical power of attorney for someone legally gives you prescribing rights for that person, and healthcare providers have to do whatever you say? I saw some seriously crazypants posts the other day, in which a woman described calling the ICU 4-5 times a day demanding that her husband be given food, Sprite, and megadoses of intravenous Vitamin C and zinc. She said the nurses kept lying to her that he couldn't have anything by mouth due to the risk of aspiration and the doctor could not prescribe megadose vitamins, and she just kept yelling that she had power of attorney so they had to do whatever she said. And of course when he died it was the fault of the evil healthcare workers who illegally defied her orders. Because he totally would have made it if he'd just had a sandwich, a can of Sprite, and 50 grams/day of Vitamin C!

Oh.my.I.just.can't.even....nope....no words for that kind of whackadoodleness!

😲

[Faith-manor]

1 minute ago, Pam in CT said:

re "right to __________" vs "Constitutional right to __________"

I could get on board as well, with an ethical right to _____ or a human right to _______.  I'd add "basic health care" and "safe housing" as well.

Hard pressed to cite the substantiating Article in the Constitution, though.  IANAL, and perhaps the right scholar could glimpse the midrash between the lines; and other scholars could squint a different interpretation.

But that's what I mean by conflating "Muh Constitutional Right!!" with "I Hate This." 

I think maybe the promote the general welfare, domestic tranquility, part of the preamble might cover it because dangerous water and air is definitely against the general welfare, and doesn't make for domestic tranquility either. But I am not sure. I would be very PRO making these things constitutional rights for.certain if the document cannot be interpreted to support them.

[frogger]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

I think it depends on the mask mandate.  I don't consider it a violation of my rights if a location's owner or manager institutes a mask mandate.  That includes school superintendents, governments running bus lines, our local grocery store owner, or my next-door neighbor wrt his house.  However, there are some entities that do not have a constitutional right to decide who masks in places they neither own nor manage.

Although, I agree on private property, I think public areas can have extra requirements so all people can use them. I'm afraid in my area, the people who were most against mandates also had zero respect for private property owners and would ignore all rules established by business owners. They ought to have been able to be kicked off for trespassing but there are just too many nuts. 

[SKL]

13 minutes ago, frogger said:

Although, I agree on private property, I think public areas can have extra requirements so all people can use them. I'm afraid in my area, the people who were most against mandates also had zero respect for private property owners and would ignore all rules established by business owners. They ought to have been able to be kicked off for trespassing but there are just too many nuts. 

I do think that after the initial learning curve, it was/is wrong for people to disrespect the requests of property owners / managers.  I know even here there are some who are still jerks about it, but most people do respect mask requests, even if they don't agree with the reasoning behind them.

[WildflowerMom]

34 minutes ago, Quill said:

Oh, man...

I can totally imagine...Medicine is similar to law in that people think they know about it because they watched every episode of ER or Matlock. 

I didn't even get to the end of the thread and had to quote this.  I think this is spot on.   I'll also add to the list of lawyers and doctors, law enforcement.   They watch CSI and all of a sudden they're experts on luminol, decomposition, and exit wounds.  🤦🏻‍♀️

[Kassia]

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

For me it is about the same as trying to talk with flat earthers. 😯😜 I just can't make heads nor tails of it, and in my head I begin to hear, "Jibber jabber jibber jabber". 

Our county health department director was harassed into quitting because she supported masks. The new flap is th county commissioners are trying to hire someone for the job with zero experience or degrees related to public health. She doesn't meet any of the requirements outlined by the state so they want to sue the state for the right to put an unqualified human in the driver's seat for public health policy during a pandemic. This.is.not.going to.end.well.

I can see this happening here as well since they haven't replaced ours.  All they care about is their constitutional freedoms while they absolutely ignore the science.  

Edited September 21, 2021 by Kassia

[DawnM]

5 minutes ago, WildflowerMom said:

I didn't even get to the end of the thread and had to quote this.  I think this is spot on.   I'll also add to the list of lawyers and doctors, law enforcement.   They watch CSI and all of a sudden they're experts on luminol, decomposition, and exit wounds.  🤦🏻‍♀️

wait, what?   I am an expert!   I have watched every episode of every version of CSI available.   I know things......

[ScoutTN]

43 minutes ago, plansrme said:

The true Constitutional argument is over whether governors, mayors, the CDC, the TSA, etc., have the authority to issue mask mandates without following the relevant rule-making process. That is an issue under the federal and state constitutions, federal statutes, state statutes, etc., all the way down to local ordinances. We are not (or did not used to be) run by a bunch of dictators. 

I agree. I have no problem with mask mandates, but they should come through legislative bodies, not the executive branch. We are not in a short term energency.

[WildflowerMom]

28 minutes ago, DawnM said:

wait, what?   I am an expert!   I have watched every episode of every version of CSI available.   I know things......

Ok, ok, you're the exception.  🤦🏻‍♀️😆😆😆

💛

[DawnM]

6 minutes ago, WildflowerMom said:

Ok, ok, you're the exception.  🤦🏻‍♀️😆😆😆

💛

I KNEW it!

[frogger]

49 minutes ago, SKL said:

I do think that after the initial learning curve, it was/is wrong for people to disrespect the requests of property owners / managers.  I know even here there are some who are still jerks about it, but most people do respect mask requests, even if they don't agree with the reasoning behind them.

I do think a majority do here but the crazy subset is larger than I would have anticipated. Sigh.

 

 

[73349]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

 But good grief on the caller today who has pages of "research" showing how masks worn by kids will cause brain damage and dementia and a billion other things.

Yeah, that's why surgeons have all those problems... 🙄 

[Kassia]

53 minutes ago, SKL said:

 most people do respect mask requests, even if they don't agree with the reasoning behind them.

this is not what I'm seeing here and when we traveled recently.  Meanwhile, our hospital has one ICU bed left and people are leaving the ER without being seen since the wait is so long.  

[Katy]

Just because vaccines have made government-mandated quarantines so rare they basically only apply to ebola in the US in recent memory doesn't mean there isn't a long and very legal history of the government having every right to stop you from spreading deadly contagion.  Or, for that matter, ordering inoculation back in a day when it killed up to 10% of people.

[73349]

6 minutes ago, Katy said:

Just because vaccines have made government-mandated quarantines so rare they basically only apply to ebola in the US in recent memory doesn't mean there isn't a long and very legal history of the government having every right to stop you from spreading deadly contagion.  Or, for that matter, ordering inoculation back in a day when it killed up to 10% of people.

Yes, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, over a century ago. And masks are less intrusive than smallpox vaccination.

[DawnM]

Anti-maskers make me want to punch someone in the face.   It is just one of the reasons I left the school district was in.   My last school district was told many, many, many times to issue a mask mandate, we were on national news in several places because we were the only ones who didn't have a mask mandate.

I am now in a district that mandates masks.

Edited September 21, 2021 by DawnM

[73349]

1 hour ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:

Yeah, I don't take seriously cries against government regulation by parents whose kids are in government schools.  Or the cries against socialism from people whose children are in the single most socialistic entity ever in the US: public school.  I spend a lot of energy refraining from saying, "Hon, when you take government services, you get government regulation.  It's a packaged deal.  Wanna do it 100% your way?  Homeschool on your own dime. "

I love the anti-socialism bumper stickers I see while driving along the state-maintained roads! 😄

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Carolina Wren

[City Mouse]

2 hours ago, regentrude said:

Does asking women to wear a shirt also violate the constitution? There's much less justification for such a rule, as breasts do not spread contagion.

I live in a state where this has gone to court. The court ruled that breasts are not sexual (as was the claim) so women can now go topless anywhere men are allowed to go topless. An unintended consequence is that since breasts are not sexual organs, touching a women’s breast (covered or not) without permission is no longer sexual assault. It is simple assault-no different than punching someone.

[Guest]

49 minutes ago, Carolina Wren said:

Yeah, that's why surgeons have all those problems... 🙄 

Literally what I pointed out to her, which made her angry...

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Carolina Wren said:

Yes, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, over a century ago. And masks are less intrusive than smallpox vaccination.

Yes I was ready to ask her if she had heard of that ruling but we never got to, you know, an actual *conversation*. 

[melmichigan]

All county school districts were labeled a special population and given the option of masking all students during an outbreak. That would allow close contacts to remain in-person with serial testing. It worked very well with a local private school.  We have a school in our district with 10% of the students testing positive on the second week of school, but after all the pushback they've received on masks, with lengthy school board meetings presenting similar research, they simply closed the school for 10 days. People are done dealing with it. 🤷‍♀️  You don't want your kids to have a mask on the bus, drive them.  You want masks optional, then they'll simply close the school with no virtual options when they have an outbreak. I feel very sad for all the kids that did so well with mask all last year.  Parents can't even manage to get on board for a limited time this year.

Edited September 21, 2021 by melmichigan

[Wheres Toto]

2 hours ago, ScoutTN said:

I agree. I have no problem with mask mandates, but they should come through legislative bodies, not the executive branch. We are not in a short term energency.

I'm pretty sure a pandemic counts as a short term emergency.

[RootAnn]

I know a kid who chose to withdraw from college (on an almost full ride scholarahip) because he refused to wear a mask inside the classrooms (which is the only place they really require them on this campus). I'm sad because of the ramifications of having that one semester transcript filled with Ws. But his mom is proud of him and supportive of whatever his next step in life is. I probably would have told my kid to suck it up. Quite a bit of the staff & students wear their masks under their noses... 

[Noreen Claire]

53 minutes ago, Wheres Toto said:

I'm pretty sure a pandemic counts as a short term emergency.

Unfortunately, at this point I think it's a long-term emergency....

[regentrude]

13 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

I know a kid who chose to withdraw from college (on an almost full ride scholarahip) because he refused to wear a mask inside the classrooms (which is the only place they really require them on this campus). I'm sad because of the ramifications of having that one semester transcript filled with Ws. 

A semester of Ws, especially during the pandemic, won't raise eyebrows. Students withdraw all the time, for a variety of reasons.

( I still think the guy is a moron)

[KSera]

25 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

I know a kid who chose to withdraw from college (on an almost full ride scholarahip) because he refused to wear a mask inside the classrooms (which is the only place they really require them on this campus). I'm sad because of the ramifications of having that one semester transcript filled with Ws. But his mom is proud of him and supportive of whatever his next step in life is. I probably would have told my kid to suck it up. Quite a bit of the staff & students wear their masks under their noses... 

I saw a story today about a young couple who went out to eat, leaving their baby with cystic fibrosis home with his grandma. They wore a mask in the restaurant as they do everywhere to protect their son, and the restaurant owner made them leave, even after they explained they were doing it to protect their baby, because he doesn’t believe in masks. What kind of person puts their meaningless political beliefs above the health of a baby with cystic fibrosis? This pandemic has really damaged people’s common sense and morality (well, I think it started before that, and the pandemic is allowing the consequences of that to be amplified). 
 

eta: in case anyone is going to say, yes, probably not super wise for the couple to be eating in the restaurant at all right now with such a fragile baby, but they live in Texas and are fully vaccinated, and I can imagine in that environment being fully vaccinated and masking while not eating feels pretty darn cautious. From the article, this was a rare thing for them to do, to go out at all on their own.

Edited September 21, 2021 by KSera

[Drama Llama]

. . . 

Edited October 26, 2021 by BaseballandHockey

[kokotg]

A group of parents just filed a lawsuit like this in my county. I...better not say anything else about that. 

Here's the flip side: https://www.npr.org/sections/back-to-school-live-updates/2021/08/24/1030632820/the-aclu-sues-south-carolina-over-its-school-mask-ban

Quote

Parents who filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in South Carolina have children with a number of conditions, including asthma and weakened immune systems. In a statement, the ACLU said that "the ban on mask mandates effectively excludes these students from public schools, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act."