NEWS
On Aug. 21, the Kentucky Supreme Court said the state’s General Assembly can limit a governor’s powers. P H OTO : U N S P L AS H
Beshear Yanks Kentucky’s School Masking Order after Recent State Supreme Court Ruling All of Kentucky’s 120 counties are labeled as high risk for COVID-19 BY A L L I S O N BA B K A
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entucky Gov. Andy Beshear has rescinded a statewide order for those in schools to mask up, just weeks after putting the order into place. The Kentucky Supreme Court shared an opinion Aug. 21 that the state’s General Assembly could limit what a governor can and cannot do on his or her own. In practice, Beshear can no longer set a mask order for the Commonwealth, despite COVID-19 cases overwhelming Kentucky hospitals. Instead, Beshear would need to call a special session of
the General Assembly to discuss and pass a new state of emergency together, and then pass orders that result from the state of emergency. The action essentially means that public health emergencies will be mitigated by committees of legislators instead of measures put forth by medical experts such as Dr. Steven Stack, commissioner for the Kentucky Department for Public Health. Stack and other medical personnel have been appearing at COVID-19 briefings with Beshear throughout the pandemic.
Beshear signed the order requiring everyone to wear a mask when in indoor areas within all educational settings on Aug. 10, saying that masking helps slow or reduce the transmission of COVID-19 (health experts agree, with many saying that the coronavirus is increasingly becoming more airborne). Beshear was not legally required to end the school masking mandate immediately but felt it was his duty to do so, given the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision. “The position we put forth, I still think is right. But we lost. I lost,” Beshear said on Aug. 23. “I can still work my tail off every day with the tools that I have to protect people.” As of press time, a mask mandate enacted by the Kentucky Board of Education remains in effect for public schools throughout the state. Republican legislators and Catholic school advocates in Kentucky largely have been against mask mandates from Beshear — a Democrat — even as the Commonwealth suffers through another sustained COVID-19 spike. Some have pressed the legalities of Beshear’s, or any governor’s, emergency powers. In Ohio, a similar situation unfolded earlier this year with the passing of
Senate Bill 122, which blocks the Ohio Department of Health and, by extension, Gov. Mike DeWine from enacting health protocols. Until June, DeWine largely had supported protective measures such as masking, capacity limits, physical distancing and curfews, and credits those actions with slowing the spread of COVID-19 within the Buckeye State.
Kentucky remains engulfed by COVID-19 The decision to limit the governor’s executive powers comes as Kentucky is sustaining a sharp, weeks-long spike in COVID-19 cases, largely attributed to the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus. As of Aug. 28, all of Kentucky’s 120 counties are labeled as being high risk by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The virus has quickly spread throughout the state with little resistance, pushing healthcare workers to the brink. In a report released Aug. 24, state and national agencies said that Kentucky had 18,157 new COVID-19 cases as of Aug. 20 — a 9% increase over the previous week.
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