Southern Illinois News

State Rep. Paul Jacobs (R-Pomona) is cheering a Sangamon County Circuit judge’s decision to halt Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s school mask and testing mandate as a win for all.

“Last week’s ruling is a victory for our students, teachers, and school districts in general,” Jacobs said in a post to his website. “I have long advocated that these public health decisions be left to local officials. I support wearing a mask if you want to, but I don’t think the government has the right to dictate that you do.”

With some of the governor’s mandates going back more than a year, hundreds of residents have sought what they view as relief through filing lawsuits that challenge the orders and have come before the court over the last several weeks.

In rendering her ruling, Judge Raylene Grischow blasted the bureaucratic maneuvering as a “type of evil” that the law was not meant to have to contend with.

While Pritzker has already vowed to appeal the verdict, Jacobs said he can’t see how that should make much of a difference.

“The people of Illinois have had enough,” he said. “It is long past time that we unmask our kids and get them back to a normal footing in our schools. The governor should drop his mandates-first policies, and withdraw his appeal to this ruling.”

In asserting that all non-named districts are free to govern themselves accordingly, Grischow ordered districts to “temporarily halt requiring masks and excluding children from school and stop requiring vaccines or testing for teachers, unless there’s individual due process.”

Filed by attorney Thomas DeVore on behalf of more than 700 parents across the state, the suit named roughly 170 school districts, the Pritzker administration and state education officials as plaintiffs. 

Even as he’s announced plans to lift the state mask mandate by the end of the month, Pritzker stands firm on the mandate where schools are concerned.

“Schools need a little more time for community infection rates to drop, for our youngest learners to become vaccine eligible and for more parents to get their kids vaccinated,” he said.