No masks at SC airports? TSA no longer enforcing mask mandate after judge’s ruling
South Carolinians, thousands of whom are geared up for spring travel and prepping for summer vacations, won’t be required to wear masks when they fly in and out of the country’s airports.
The Transportation Security Administration said Monday it no longer would enforce a federal mask mandate that had been in place for most of the pandemic — about 14 months.
The decision came hours after a federal judge struck down the mandate Monday afternoon, ruling that the mask requirement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded that agency’s authority.
“Because our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends, the court declares unlawful and vacates the mask mandate,” U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle wrote in her 59-page decision. Mizelle, appointed by former President Donald Trump, is based in Florida.
Following the ruling, the White House said the mask mandate “is no longer in effect” and would not be enforced by TSA.
“The agencies are reviewing the decision and assessing potential next steps,” the Biden administration said Monday night. “In the meantime, today’s court decision means CDC’s public transportation masking order is not in effect at this time. Therefore, TSA will not enforce its Security Directives and Emergency Amendment requiring mask use on public transportation and transportation hubs at this time. CDC recommends that people continue to wear masks in indoor public transportation settings.”
In South Carolina, the mask mandate has not been consistently enforced. Myrtle Beach International Airport was threatened with thousands of dollars in fines after reporting by The Sun News showed that local police officers refused to follow the mandate.
Last August, at the height of the of the delta wave of the coronavirus in South Carolina, Horry County Police Chief Joseph Hill wrote in an email that “no one will care, no one that matters” if his officers failed to wear masks when inside the airport.
In February, the airport put up signs at every entrance reminding travelers of the mask requirement. The signs were taken down in mid-2021, despite the mask mandate being in place for almost all of last year.
State officials, including S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, have been opposed to the mask mandate for months.
“Still forcing Americans to wear masks on planes and trains is another example of President Biden’s hypocrisy and complete disregard for our liberties. It just doesn’t make any sense,” McMaster tweeted last week.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called Mizelle’s ruling “obviously a disappointing decision.”
“So, we would say to anyone sitting out there — we recommend you wear masks on the airplane and ... as soon as we can provide an update from here, hopefully soon, we’ll provide that to all of you,” Psaki told reporters.
Late Tuesday, four airlines — United, Delta, Southwest and Alaska — announced they would no longer be enforcing the mandate.
“Given the unexpected nature of this announcement, please be aware that customers, airline employees and federal agency employees — such as TSA — may be receiving this information at different times,” Delta Airlines said in an alert to travelers that initially there might be some confusion about the mandate.
Southwest, the nation’s largest domestic carrier, flies to Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, Charleston International Airport and Myrtle Beach International Airport. Its expansion to Myrtle Beach last year marked a major new step in post-vaccine travel, as many airlines shifted their operations to focus less on business travel and more on leisure.
CDC mask order
The mandate applied to everyone 2 years old and older on all public transit, airports, planes, trains and buses. The order has been extended more than a half dozen times, with the most recent extension issued last week to May 3. Usually those extensions came as COVID-19 cases rose during various waves of the pandemic.
However, the most recent two extensions have come as cases of the virus have been declining across much of the country.
The CDC and public health professionals have long held that the mask mandate was necessary because of how difficult it can be to maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from others on public transit. On planes, for example, passengers sit just inches away from each other.
“In order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and health care system capacity, the CDC order will remain in place at this time,” the agency said in a statement last week when the mandate was extended an additional 15 days to May 3.
In March, Myrtle Beach’s top doctor Dr. Gerald Harmon, who is also president of the American Medical Association, spoke to The Sun News about the importance of wearing masks on public transit.
“I’ve been in the spring break travel environment,” he said. “Every airplane was overwhelmed with passengers. The airports were swarming with passengers. There were flights being delayed.”
Not only is mask wearing important to protect the wearer from getting exposed to COVID-19, Harmon said it can also help ensure the virus doesn’t spread, either.
“I don’t know who’s got that 12-year-old, that 10-year-old at home that is immunocompromised,” Harmon said, noting that children under 5 still don’t have an approved vaccine they can take. “And if they go on public transportation or someplace where I’m next to them and I cough or sneeze and I’m not protected, can I have transmitted them unwittingly a deadly virus?”
Proponents of the mandate have cited BA.2 — a subvariant of the contagious omicron COVID-19 variant — as well as the rise in cases in New York, Washington, D.C., and parts of Europe for why it should be extended.
“It is true that planes have excellent ventilation infiltration, but they don’t protect against these close-range exposures and people are close in airplanes,” Linsey Marr, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who studies airborne transmission of viruses, told The Wall Street Journal last week.
“I think this is wise,” she told The Wall Street Journal about the decision to extend the mask requirement.
Industry groups, however, have come out in opposition to the mandate in recent months.
“While the public health benefits of these policies have greatly diminished, the economic costs associated with maintaining these measures are significant,” according to an April 8 letter to the CDC from Airlines for America, the U.S. Travel Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
Mizelle’s ruling can still be appealed. Several other attempts to get the mandate struck down have failed repeatedly.
Harmon said he has supported mask wearing because of the way COVID-19 has routinely sparked a new surge in cases, just when Americans feel like they’re past it.
“We’ve had five distinct surges of the coronavirus, and I’m hoping that it’s in the rearview mirror now,” Harmon said. “But I’m not going to guarantee you that.”
This story was originally published April 18, 2022 at 8:54 PM.
