Mask requirement for students violates religious rights

 Mask requirement for students violates religious rights

 

 The State Secretary of Health in Pennsylvania ordered that all students needed to wear masks in school in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19.   A group of parents felt that there should have been an option for a religious exemption.  The State disagreed.   This is America so the parents made a federal case out of it - literally, and took their views to U.S District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania.

The parents asked for a preliminary injunction which would only be granted if the judge determined that the parents would prevail in a full case hearing.

The parents made several points in arguing for the religious exemption.  One parent said she believed that wearing a mask was immoral because it caused bodily harm in the form of mask acne.   She stated that the body is a temple and should not be harmed.  Although she acknowledged that communicable diseases are harmful and, in her view, God would want us to protect ourselves from communicable disease.

Another parent stated that one of the Epistles of Paul to Corinthians instructed that the covering on ones face was a dishonor to God.  She could not, at the time of the hearing, specify the specific biblical book or verse.

Another parent said he felt that masks made a mockery of the gift of life because they cover what makes us human and, therefore, show a lack of gratitude to the creator.  He did acknowledge that he approved of his son wearing protective head coverings for sports.

Parents also wanted to present testimony from a physiologist to show that the concentration of carbon dioxide under a mask exceeds levels normally accepted for indoor air quality.  The District has a pending motion to exclude this testimony.  Until that motion is heard the testimony was not allowed.

The school district representative testified that there are medical exemptions allowed for the mask wearing requirement but that none of the plaintiffs has requested a medical exemption.   There are no religious exemptions allowed under the Secretary’s order.

The judge ruled that it is not sufficient for Plaintiffs to hold a “sincere opposition” to mask-wearing but need to show that it is a religious belief.  The judge ruled that although each of the four Plaintiffs has a passionate objection to wearing a mask, none of them has a belief that warrants First Amendment protection.  Therefore, he denied the request for an injunction because he said Plaintiffs failed to meet the standard that they would prevail at court.   Requiring a mask for health protections does not, in this case, violate First Amendment religious protections.