Beaufort Co. parents celebrate federal ruling as path opens for school mask mandates
For some, the recent flurry of activity around South Carolina’s mask mandate debate came out of left field.
After weeks of radio silence from the state Supreme Court, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, pausing a state law aimed at preventing school districts from requiring masks.
Immediately after, Beaufort County’s school board called a special meeting for 5 p.m. Thursday to discuss implementing a mask mandate for students and staff, a decision it had previously stalled on while waiting for a state Supreme Court decision.
But for many parents, the ruling and special meeting have left them “very hopeful” that their lengthy battle on social media and in private has paid off.
For the past several weeks, Emily Peláez and the 200-plus members of her Facebook group “Beaufort County Parents FOR Mask Mandates” have been filing complaints with the Office of Civil Rights.
They claim that the South Carolina law, which expires after one year and states that any school or district that requires masks for students or staff will lose state funding, discriminates against students with disabilities, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act. On Aug. 30, OCR announced it was investigating the S.C. Department of Education on those grounds.
The complaints take about five minutes to file, and any parent of a public schoolchild can file one, Peláez said.
“That’s federal law, and that’s where I think we’re cooking with gas,” she said.
Apparently U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis agreed. In her Tuesday ruling, she referenced the Americans with Disabilities Act, and wrote that “‘no one can reasonably argue that it is an undue burden to wear a mask to accommodate a child with disabilities.”
S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson has appealed Lewis’ ruling, and on Thursday the state Supreme Court upheld the focal point of the law, which prohibits school districts from using state funding to implement mask mandates. The state-level ruling did include that districts could use other sources of funding, such as the millions in federal COVID relief funds that Beaufort County School District has received.
The S.C. Department of Education released a statement later that the state Supreme Court decision doesn’t affect the federal ruling, and that school districts can still implement mask mandates.
But in the meantime, Peláez is “very hopeful” that the school board will issue a mask mandate.
Other group members are less optimistic.
“There doesn’t seem to be any accountability,” Laura Stager said of the school board. “Unfortunately I’d love to say they’ll make the right decision, but I’m not sure.”
Peláez said Thursday that the group will keep moving forward no matter what the school board decides. Group members have been in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union and are connecting with other parents who have sued the state of South Carolina, she said.
‘United for one cause’
Peláez describes herself as a stay-at-home mom, a military wife and an introvert — not the type of person who’d start a Facebook group for activists, she said.
But when her family moved from North Carolina to Beaufort County a few months ago and she realized her children wouldn’t be able to continue virtual-only classes, Peláez decided to take action.
She has a heart condition that puts her at a higher risk if she contracts COVID, and had heard the worries of parents whose children have disabilities or pre-existing conditions that increase risk.
She started the Facebook group “Beaufort County Parents FOR Mask Mandates” and began tagging it in the comments of local news stories about COVID. She also started circulating a petition to mandate masks in all S.C. school districts. The petition has 1,715 signatures.
In the five weeks since the group was started, it’s grown from around 15 members to 241, with parents posting every day about making comments at school board meetings, COVID horror stories from around the country and news related to South Carolina’s mask mandate debate.
”In a two-week span, I had four people I know die from COVID,” said Christina Roberts, who was added to the group by another parent.
She has four children in the district, including three with autism and underlying health conditions that put them at increased risk if they get COVID.
“I just don’t understand why people are fighting so hard against this,” she said. “There are children that can’t protect themselves. There are people with underlying conditions. There are older people taking care of their grandkids. We see this every day in the school pick-up line.”
Several other members of the group also have children with underlying conditions, including asthma, epilepsy, hypertension, cancer and chronic lung disease.
“The greatest thing about our group is we are Republicans, we are Democrats, we are Libertarians, we are independents,” Peláez said. “We are religious, we are non-religious, we are from all different career paths. ... And we are all in one group, united for one cause, advocating for our children.”
Stager said the group has been “therapeutic” for her. She has two children in the school district, and her son, who is too young to be vaccinated, contracted COVID-19 a few weeks into school.
She spoke about the experience at a school board meeting and was asked to meet with superintendent Frank Rodriguez, which she did Friday.
She brought an agenda to the meeting, including questions she’d sourced from the Facebook group; she wasn’t satisfied with the response she got about mandatory masking, which was that the district wouldn’t break the law to implement a mask mandate.
“At some point, even reasonable people need to take a stand,” she said.