by Donald Wood
Last updated: 8:50 AM ET, Fri June 23, 2023
A United States appeals court vacated a ruling from April
2022 that declared it was unlawful for the government to require
facial coverings on airplanes and other modes of transportation.
According to Reuters.com,
the U.S. Department of Justice asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to “declare
the issue moot” after President Joe Biden ended the coronavirus emergency in
May.
Judge Charles Wilson said in the appeals court opinion that “while
we think a legal degree confers many advantages, we do not believe it equips us
to accurately predict if or when another global respiratory pandemic will
infect our shared world.”
The plaintiffs who sued the government in hopes of overturning
the mask mandate said vacating the ruling “would give CDC the ability to do
this - or something like it - again while evading review in this court.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued
the mask
mandate just days after President Biden took office in 2021, but the court
ruled that the was no “evidence that the CDC has any plans to promulgate an
identical mandate.”
The vacated ruling went into effect in April 2022 after a U.S.
district judge said the “CDC lacked legal authority to issue a nationwide
travel mask mandate.”
In other travel-related legal news, U.S. District Judge Leo
Sorokin from Boston ruled earlier this month that American Airlines and JetBlue
Airways would have “21 days after he issues a final judgment” to end their Northeast
Alliance.
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