Hello, Midas. Mighty Harry Littman from Talking Feds here. I wanted to talk a little bit today about this mask mandate, what the heck is going on with it and how did it begin. So, okay, in brief, it's actually a great example or a terrible example, depending on your view of the breathtaking power of a single trial level federal judge and as I'm going to explain the decision itself is pretty funky, probably wrong,

because it was a quint decision after finding a violation to enjoy the entire rule throughout the nation is really out there should be reversed, but right now the government's deciding whether it wants to challenge it. Okay. So, the case began in July of 2021, that's important because it's not as if anything about her decision rested on the fact that cases have been waning.

Which, of course, is not fully true in something they've been waxing and waning. So, this decision would have been the same whether it was at the high water mark of COVID where everybody was wearing masks in airports as a matter of course. Alright, it was brought by two people who said that they have their regular travelers and they have anxiety and wearing a mask aggravates the anxiety.

Now, I don't want to like demean that, but it's just a good example. You need if you want to come into court and injury. It's got to be real, but it can be pretty light.

So, what do we have here that has now brought the entire rule down to people who said, I've got anxiety and this makes it a little worse and there's no exception. That's how they got in the door.

So, that permitted with that injury, the court to decide, okay, is this lawful or isn't it?

The court said that it was unlawful basically because the CDC act grant of authority that invoked didn't actually cover it. And here's the analysis. So,

the CDC relied on the Public Health Services Act of 1944. And in particular, a provision of it that says, they can make regulations to identify, isolate and destroy diseases.

Seems pretty strong so far. And with the approval of the HHS, which they have, they can make regulations as are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the state.

Also sounds pretty strong so far. And then the next sentence becomes the big focus for purposes of carrying out these regulations, they can provide for inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination and other measures of the sort.

So, can you see the stress points here? We're going to be looking at a sanitation and other measures, although the judge just says, forget about the other measures because they've got to be kind of pardoned parcel. So we're looking at sanitation.

All right, the United States says, look, sanitation, what does sanitation mean? And by the way, here's a dictionary. It's measures that clean something or that remove or neutralize elements in curious to health.

Again, seems very straightforward right down down the middle, but the judge and I guess let's take a second to tell you a little bit about this judge, your name is Catherine Kimball, my cell.

She was put into office in the lame duck period, the youngest judge that Trump had appointed in all years she was 33 years old.

She was like seven years out of a courtship with justice, yes, Thomas, and she was rated unqualified by the ABA, but that was because she hadn't tried a case.

I don't think the problem is that she's never, you know, she, her analysis is kind of legal. It just feels to me, very conservative and activist and wrong. But anyway, so here you have the

youngest judge Trump has put on in the lame duck period, who's rated unqualified and she says, sanitation, sure, the government says that, but she's got her own dictionaries and her own definitions of sanitation, and they had they basically don't go to property, she says, and don't go to mass and goes through this very long analysis of why

her dictionary definition beats the United States definition. So the ultimate finding you'll hear about sanitation and the question whether sanitation counts for preventing disease, it sure seems like a normal reading of it, the judge finds otherwise. And by the way, the judge now is there are a lot of articles about the new folk hero on the right for basically striking this down.

So she says the best definition is where you're really trying to keep things clean. And that's not what a mass does that. So she's, she says, that's the better, the better definition. Alright, so a fairly tenuous ruling about why the source of authority for the CDC doesn't cut it here, but now we get to the really funky part.

She decides having found that it's unlawful to enter a nationwide injunction. And here we have the amazing power of a single federal district court judge once they have the power to pass on something's lawfulness.

So she says the only way to give the remedy that for to the plaintiff is by enjoying the entire nation. So people, you know, they they took off in the air and there was a mass mandate. They landed and surprised there wasn't any any more. And that's the state of things right now. There is the mass mandate is not applicable anywhere in the country.

Alright, why not because she says it just would be too hard to give these two plaintiffs with anxiety, the relief that they are asking for because there's so many travelers out there.

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