If there’s anyone in this country who’s giving the Delta variant of the COVID-19 pandemic a free ride across the nation, it’s Florida’s GOP governor Ron DeSantis. Not only has he blatantly refused to implement any statewide guidelines or restrictions to speak of, he’s made it nearly impossible for anyone to do so on a local level either — essentially just leaving individuals to fend for themselves.
Earlier this year, DeSantis signed a bill that effectively banned schools from mandating face masks, despite the overwhelming surges of the deadly virus in his state. Now, he’s taking his horrific actions that much farther as school districts begin to push back and test the limits of Ron’s ban amid massive outbreaks of the variant that’s now taking the lives of children.
Tallahassee’s school superintendent has promised to defy DeSantis’ ban and made it clear that they will be requiring masks in their schools regardless of what the Republican governor says. And he’s not alone. Florida State University is also mandating that all their students and teachers wear masks amid the massive outbreaks.
Frankly, we expected lawsuits to come from disgruntled individuals over the mask mandates in the Sunshine State. But DeSantis isn’t even waiting for that to take its course. According to a new report from CBS Miami, the state’s GOP governor has now asserted that school board members and superintendents will not be paid if mask mandates are implemented in their district.
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“With respect to enforcing any financial consequences for non-compliance of state law regarding these rules and ultimately the rights of parents to make decisions about their children’s education and health care decisions, it would be the goal of the State Board of Education to narrowly tailor any financial consequences to the offense committed,” the statement from DeSantis reads. “For example, the State Board of Education could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members, as a narrowly tailored means to address the decision-makers who led to the violation of law.”
DeSantis is already facing down a lawsuit from parents of high-risk, vulnerable, and disable children over his anti-maks bill.
Twenty-seven parents and their children alleged in the lawsuit filed last week that DeSantis “does not have the authority to threaten school districts with loss of funding if they protect their students with disabilities health and rights to be in an integrated learning environment.”
As COVID cases continue to rage in Florida, making the state the highest in the country in the number of cases, Dr. Jonathan Reiner appeared on CNN and noted that if Florida were its own country, the US would have likely already implemented a travel ban to and from the area — a theory that many of Ron’s own residents agree with.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
