Columbia Public Schools asks for dismissal of AG’s mask mandate lawsuit
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ) -
Columbia Public Schools called the Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt's lawsuit over its former mask rule moot since the district dropped its mandate.
The district asked Judge Joshua Devine to dismiss the attorney general's January lawsuit on Thursday. The district argued that it no longer has a policy requiring masks that the state's top lawyer targeted in his lawsuit.
Schmitt sued CPS and 45 other school districts in January over their mask rules as COVID-19 cases rose due to the omicron subvariant. The AG dropped many of those lawsuits, including one against the Jefferson City School District, as districts dropped their rules. Only lawsuits against CPS and the St. Charles R-6 School District currently remain of those districts that ended mask rules.
District lawyer Natalie Hoernschemeyer said speculation that CPS might impose a mask rule once the AG drops the lawsuit "has no basis in fact." She said the recent move by Gov. Parson to respond to COVID-19 as an endemic disease proves that it is unreasonable to think the district will require masks the moment the state drops the lawsuit.
""The Attorney General has no factual basis for a belief that the District will implement another masking requirement other than his own speculation that at some point in the future COVID-19 cases will drastically rise," Hoernschemeyer wrote. "No one, including the Attorney General, can predict that future."
A judge previously rejected the AG's request to ban mask mandates in CPS last year. The state dropped the lawsuit in December.
Judge Devine has not yet set a hearing date over the request to dismiss the lawsuit. A pre-trial hearing in is set for Sept. 9, with a bench trial starting in October.
