Attorney General Paxton joined a Florida-led amicus brief filed in the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit seeking to affirm a successful challenge to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Transportation Mask Mandate. The CDC is appealing a lower court’s order striking down the mandate.
“No one doubts that the COVID–19 pandemic has posed challenges for every American,” the brief says, quoting from the United States Supreme Court’s decision striking down the OSHA vaccine mandate. “But the question, in this case, is not how best to confront those challenges. Rather, it is who decides—is it ‘an administrative agency in Washington,’ or ‘state and local governments across the country and the people’s elected representatives in Congress’? If that sounds familiar, it should. Throughout the pandemic, this administration has turned to novel, expansive, and dubious readings of its authorities. CDC has been among the worst offenders, making ‘unprecedented assertion[s] of power.”
