Sanitation. The fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's mask mandate

on planes, trains, and buses ended earlier this month, let came down in part to an interpretation

of that word. Sanitation.

In a statement, the CDC defended the mask mandate, saying,

US District Judge Catherine Kimball-Maisel voided the mask requirement for all public transit.

She cited a law that gives the CDC power to stop the spread of communicable diseases,

through measures like inspection, fumigation, disinfection, and sanitation.

But according to Lawrence Gosten, a professor of public health law at Georgetown,

she looked at the dictionary definition of sanitation, and that didn't include masks.

And that was the court's reason.

The Biden administration is appealing the decision.

And although it's not clear, if the mandate would be immediately reinstated, if the government

wins that appeal.

It's not the first blow to a pandemic-era CDC rule.

Last August, the Supreme Court struck down its order that extended a moratorium on evictions.

Lindsay Wiley, a health law professor at UCLA, said the eviction ban was a bit of a stretch

for the CDC.

A lot of the general public and a lot of federal judges feel like, you know, this isn't

exactly what CDC's role should be. This is something state and local governments are doing,

and it should really be left to them.

Now to understand what the CDC's authority actually is, you have to go back to 1944.

That's when the U.S. passed the Public Health Service Act, the law cited by the Biden

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