Education Dept. opens investigations into 5 statewide bans on mask mandates
The U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday that it has opened civil rights investigations into five statewide bans on mask mandates to determine whether they discriminate against students with disabilities. The department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to school officials in Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah describing how bans on universal mask requirements could prevent schools from implementing policies that protect students from COVID-19, particularly those with underlying medical conditions “related to their disability.”
In the letters, the agency wrote that the prohibition of mask mandates "may be preventing schools … from meeting their legal obligations not to discriminate based on disability and from providing an equal educational opportunity to students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from COVID-19.” The probes will examine whether the bans violate parts of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act that forbid discrimination based on a person’s disabilities and that give all students the right to free public schooling. The OCR said it will collect data from the five education departments “over the coming weeks.”
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said that parents of children with disabilities have told the department that the prohibition on mask requirements is putting their kids “at risk” and “preventing them from accessing in-person learning equally.”
"It's simply unacceptable that state leaders are putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve,” Cardona said in a statement. “The Department will fight to protect every student's right to access in-person learning safely and the rights of local educators to put in place policies that allow all students to return to the classroom full-time in-person safely this fall."
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/570024-education-dept-opens-investigations-into-5-statewide-bans
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