The NPR Politics Podcast - Federal Court Ends CDC's Transportation Mask Mandate

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

A judge said the rule exceeded the Centers for Disease Control's power, raising questions about how the agency can enforce public health rules in future crises. The Biden administration, so far, has not committed to an appeal of the ruling.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and transportation correspondent David Schaper.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Mark Kleinhans from Cleveland, Ohio, sitting here with my newborn baby daughter, Violet, who was born just a few days after our stay at the Star Wars Galactic Star Cruiser themed hotel at Walt Disney World. This podcast was recorded at... It's 2.04 Eastern on Tuesday, April 19th, here on Earth. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, enjoy the show. Oh my God, this is a timestamp just for us. I'm so jealous. I want to stay at the Star Wars Hotel.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And David Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And David Schaper is also here. He covers transportation for NPR. Welcome to the podcast, David. Hey there, guys.

And David, you are here because yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Kimball-Mizell ruled that the federal mask mandate on planes, trains, buses, and other modes of public transportation is unlawful. She ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had exceeded its authority and failed to follow proper rulemaking procedures. And David, we will start with you. A lot happened right after that ruling. Catch us up to speed. Yeah, well, the ruling came out and there was a little bit of confusion initially because it wasn't sure, folks weren't sure if it took effect immediately. But there were airline pilots who, mid-flight, announced to everyone on board that this judge had made that ruling, and there was some celebrating and people taking off their masks right away while in the air.

At this moment, if you choose to, you may remove your mask. It essentially left it up to the airlines themselves. Businesses, you know, can require their employees and their customers to wear masks if they choose to do so. And so the airlines, most of them were pretty quick to say, OK, we're not going to require masks either. The TSA came out with a statement saying they were not going to enforce the mask mandate as they had done on behalf of the CDC for the last 15 months or so. So the reaction was pretty quick. But, you know, it was interesting. I was at Chicago's O'Hare Airport last night, and there was hardly anybody not wearing a mask.

There were a few people who took them off right away. A few TSA officers I saw took them off right away and were walking around without them. But most people kept their masks on and seemed to feel more comfortable doing so. Tam, masks have become the ultimate political flashpoint in a world where everything is tribal and political. But from the moment the pandemic began, President Biden, when he was running, then when he became president, was squarely in the mask camp, squarely in the taking as many steps as possible to keep COVID under control camp. Of course, the past few months, he and the rest of the administration have

really changed the way they approach that. So given all of that, how did the White House respond? And what stood out to you about how they responded? Right. This really comes at a moment when the mask mandate was in a tenuous place, when the United States is in this weird transition phase where the CDC had changed its mask guidance for other public spaces and where masks have largely come off. Lots of other COVID prevention measures have largely come off in large parts of the country and where the CDC had asked for just two more weeks to figure out whether this surge of cases related to the BA2 variant of Omicron, whether this was going to become a big wave that was going to be a problem or whether this is going to sort of fizzle out. So it's this weird time. The White House reaction was one of disappointment. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the

White House is disappointed that the administration is reviewing its options, that the Department of Justice is reviewing its options. But is it fair to call that disappointed response muted, though? Because I've seen the White House be very angry at court rulings, be very angry at decisions from Congress or elsewhere in America, or from new laws signed by governors that they disagree with. And this felt like, like it just felt like the energy wasn't in it. Like you said, this was probably going to peter out soon anyway. Am I overreading there? Well, they're a little defensive about people suggesting that to them. And they said, you know, sometimes it takes a couple of days to figure out how to respond. And I think David can talk to this better than I can. But there are real questions

here about whether to appeal, how to appeal, whether appealing could lead to a legal precedent that they don't want, whether not appealing could lead to a legal precedent that they don't want. now, trying to figure out strategically the right path. This also comes politically when, yeah, you saw some people celebrating on planes, and then you have other people, people who are part of the president's base, who are really upset about this. The judge did address this a little bit in the ruling, you know, the notion that this is a challenge to the federal governments and the CDC's actual authority to impose certain restrictions or certain mandates to respond to a public health emergency. And the judge said, you know, if that's the case, there was no mask mandate in place on transportation for 11 months after the pandemic began. What she didn't address is that there was a transfer of power, that there was a new administration that came in,

that the previous administration was very much against mask mandates in pretty much every and all circumstances. And therefore, you know, it would have been difficult for the CDC to do that on its own, certainly in the previous administration. So it kind of will remain to be seen how this progresses. And if the Biden administration does want to appeal the judge's ruling. All right. We're going to take a quick break when we come back. More about other modes of transportation and what happens next on this particular ruling. And more broadly, with with all the other executive orders out there the Biden administration is leaning on. We are back.

And, David, I don't want to get in trouble with train enthusiasts or bus enthusiasts or all of the other modes of transportation. Several of us live with little kids who like them all. So this does apply to more than planes can you just walk us through broadly uh how other transportation sectors are reacting to this yeah i mean the mask mandate did apply to all modes of public transportation and that includes amtrak that includes uh um you know the the metro, city buses, school buses, the ride shares, taxi cabs. Light rail, let's just mention everything. Yeah, light rail.

And heavy rail, you know, commuter rail. But certainly ferries and all kinds of other modes of transportation where you have large groups of people potentially together in a small enclosed space. You know, this is kind of the interesting thing because the ruling actually turned it back to the local agencies to decide if they're going to require masks. And now some are and some are not. In Chicago and New York and Seattle and several other cities, they are going to continue requiring masks. But in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and a few other cities, they're making it optional for the time being. And these rules and guidelines may be in flux over the next couple of days and weeks. You know, public health experts I've talked to have said that there is a much greater risk in some of these settings because, you know, first of all, a lot of people don't have

another option for getting to school or getting to work or getting to the places they need to go other than a bus or a train. They don't have a personal car or vehicle that they can take by themselves and protect themselves that way. These tend to be lower income people. These tend to be people who might have greater risk of being exposed. So there are those who feel like this, again, disproportionately affects a certain portion of the population that has already been a great risk throughout this pandemic. Tam, politically, do you see any way in which the Biden administration starts to push for restrictions like that? I mean, assuming another wave comes or something like that, because you

have seen this shift in democratic politics where a lot of democratic governors, like Jared Polis of Colorado, predominantly was saying, look, we just need to live in the world. People who want to be vaccinated have had the opportunity to vaccinate and boost it. I will point out yet again that that does not apply to people five and under because that still has not happened. But you saw the Biden White House start to follow that lead and stop emphasizing masks and other precautions. Do you think this is politically fixed where they feel like this is just the world we need to live in? It's a political liability? Or do you think there's any indication that could change again?

You know, we don't know what's going to happen with the pandemic. And if there were a new variant that was extremely widespread and extremely contagious and way more deadly than Omicron, then who knows what would happen. But in terms of like where the public is right now, it seems like it is going to be increasingly difficult to go back to where we were, that people sacrificed for two years for the community good or some people sacrificed for two years for the community good. And now it seems as though and, you know, I've spoken to public health people about this, too, who are frustrated with it, but that this is now an era of individual responsibility or individual protection. So if if you want to go on public transportation and you want to wear a mask, then you get to wear a mask. But that really does disadvantage people who have immune deficiencies or are little bitty kids who can't wear a mask. You know, there are a series of risk calculations that people make, and it is now,

the politics of this have shifted that from a community response, a community responsibility to an individual response. Let's zoom out, though, on one final point, though, because this is not the only conservative judge in America. In fact, over the course of the Trump administration, a lot of them got appointed. The U.S. Supreme Court is a super majority of conservatives right now, especially looking forward to the likelihood that the Biden White

House might have a Republican Congress next year that won't want to pass any new laws with them. Is this a warning sign of what could be coming down the line for a White House that has relied aggressively on administrative rulemaking? Yeah. And this is, to be clear, not the first warning sign. They also had a vaccine mandate that was put through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They oversee workplace safety. That was blocked in court. Obviously, there are abortion rulings coming down expected. There's a lot going on on the judicial front. Today, you had Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa tweeting celebration. Look at, you know, the Republican Senate and all of their hard work

moving as quickly as they possibly could, prioritizing President Trump's judicial nominees over almost anything else, over any other action. Look at the results that it is delivering. And as we speak, the Biden administration, the White House and Democrats in the Senate have been racing to confirm as many Biden judges as possible. As meaningful legislation becomes increasingly rare with narrowly divided Congress or totally divided Congress, presidents have leaned on executive action to try to do something, to try to get things done. And what they discover again and again is that the judicial branch ends up getting in their way. David, is there anything else in the world that you cover where this could be an ongoing storyline over the next few years? Yeah, I mean, I think the role of the federal government in responding to national emergencies and in transportation, that can be a lot of different things. I mean, if this ruling is more broadly applied, and experts I've talked to improve safety just in collisions, in airline crashes and things like that.

So if this ruling is thus interpreted to erode the federal government's authority to step in and do things like that. This could have very broad implications. I may be reading into it a little too much to go that far, but there are certainly people concerned that, at least in the public health arena, that this ruling really restricts or could restrict what the CDC may be able to do in response to a national public health emergency. All right. Well, we will see what happens next with this. In the meantime, David Schaefer, thank you for coming on to the NPR Politics Podcast. Oh, it was my pleasure. It was great to be with you guys.

It was our pleasure, too. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. We will talk to you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.