Sangamon Sun

Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Louisville), a gubernatorial candidate, recently praised a Sangamon County judge's temporary restraining order against the state's school mask mandate.

The order, which was filed by Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Raylene Grischow on Friday went against Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois Department of Public Health and numerous school districts around the state, by temporarily suspending all power to enforce the mask mandate for students or to demand staff vaccinations or testing, according to a WCIA report.

"As your next governor, I will repeal all of Pritzker’s mandates," Bailey announced on Twitter,  "You should make these decisions, not government."

Numerous lawsuits had been filed against Pritzker's mandates after he issued the school mask order in early August in response to a surge in COVID-19 delta variant cases while schools prepared for another academic year, according to a WGLT report.

Residents sued a total of 146 school districts in response to the state's mask requirement, while school staff sued another 21 districts, arguing that the alternative requirement for periodic COVID testing amounted to coercive medical treatment.

Grischow ruled in favor of the residents and employees, stating in an opinion that masks, vaccines and testing are considered quarantine measures that may be enforced only after a hearing before the state's Department of Public Health or local health departments. Grischow also determined that as a result of the mandates, students and faculty had been deprived of due process.

"This type of evil is exactly what the law was intended to constrain," she stated in her ruling.

Pritzker, who promised just hours after Grischow's ruling that an appeal was forthcoming, has sought the assistance of the Illinois attorney general's office in that endeavor.

The governor claims that suspending the mandates would result in a rise in COVID-19 cases and necessitate a return to remote learning in schools.