‘Arbitrary, Unscientific, and Irrational’: D.C. Families Seek Exception to Mask Mandate in Catholic Schools

O n March 1, the Washington, D.C., city government lifted its mask mandate for most indoor settings, such as stores, bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues. But schools have been left behind — including D.C. schools in the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which no longer requires masking in schools. To fight this disparity, attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that litigates on behalf of religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and other issues, have filed a formal legal complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of two families with children who attend school in D.C., requesting an exception for students at D.C. Catholic schools from a mandate the complaint calls “arbitrary, unscientific, and irrational.”

“This Court previously stopped Defendant Mayor Muriel Bowser from unconstitutionally burdening religious exercises through her invocation of emergency powers,” the complaint states, in reference to a previous successful challenge against capacity limits for indoor worship. “The same judicial intervention under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (‘RFRA’) is yet again needed to stop Defendants Mayor Bowser, the District of Columbia, Director LaQuandra Nesbitt, and the D.C. Department of Health (collectively, ‘Defendants’) from substantially burdening and unequally treating the plaintiff-parents’ religious exercise of sending their children to a Catholic school in the District in comparison to the litany of comparable secular and other religious activities.”

The ADF had submitted a letter last week seeking an exception for students, staff, and teachers at religious schools. But Ryan Tucker, senior counsel for the ADF and representing the families in this case, says the city replied that the letter would be taken “under advisement” but never followed up. So further action became necessary.

The city’s rule on this matter persists despite patent incoherence. It is an outlier of the city’s loosened policy for other settings. It is also out of alignment with CDC guidance, which recommends masking only when community spread is high — not currently the case in the D.C. area. The complaint notes that masks are also no longer required in Congress. Moreover, D.C.’s policy makes the city unusual both among area jurisdictions (schools in Virginia and Maryland are under no such mandate) and nationwide, even in more liberal areas. “It’s very silly,” Tucker says. “Maryland, Virginia, you don’t have these mask mandates. Heck, New York, New Jersey, West Coast, California, Oregon, Washington. They all got the memo from the CDC.”

Finally, ADF argues that the rule singles out religious schools for special mistreatment. “When a government allows other comparable secular activity, like the restaurants, like the bars, like the sporting events, to be treated on a more favorable basis than religious exercise, it’s a First Amendment violation,” Tucker says. “You could go to a [Washington] Wizards game . . . and the kid could sit at the game for hours, cheering on the Wizards, and not have to wear a mask. But the moment that same child steps inside a Catholic school building, she’s gotta wear a mask. It’s just nonsensical. It defies common sense.”

The conflict of the policy with the Archdiocese of Washington’s own recommendations makes the absurdity even more stark. Last month, the archdiocese, under whose authority Catholic schools in D.C. fall, made masks in schools “voluntary and optional in jurisdictions where this is possible.” Note that “where this is possible”: Because the archdiocese covers some ground in Maryland, some students in the archdiocese now go through their days mask-free while others do not. So, for example, the boys of Georgetown Preparatory Academy, Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Bethesda, Md., alma mater, have returned to something like normal life. Meanwhile, their all-male Jesuit brethren at Gonzaga College High School, Pat Buchanan’s alma mater, in Northeast Washington, D.C., are still stuck in masks.

Further silliness is easy to parse out. It is common for a Catholic church to be linked to a parochial school. In the D.C. area, that now means a student could theoretically spend all week in school forced to mask, but then attend Mass mask-free on the weekend in a building either directly connected to or near the school.

There is also plenty of evidence of other harms. ADF’s initial letter argued that masks inhibit communication, obstruct socialization, disadvantage “a broad range of student personalities, from children who are shy to those who are outgoing, and a broad range of student skills, from those who struggle to speak and understand well to those who need the opportunity to excel,” and create unwelcome physical discomforts. Tucker says that parents of students in archdiocesan schools “hear stories from their kids on a daily basis about how they couldn’t follow certain directives, they couldn’t understand certain things, and so it’s an extremely bad learning environment.”

But don’t just take it from them. An organization of parents in the archdiocese has put together a collection of letters from students at D.C. Catholic schools making the case themselves. One letter comes from John, “10 years old turning 11 in September,” who says that “masks are dumb, stupid, atrocious, and horrible.” Will, in second grade, wants to be mask-free because “they itch and it’s hard to breathe,” and he “can’t understand” his teacher. Another second-grader simply says, “Please, can we take off our masks. It is hard to be our self.”

Critics might counter that ADF’s complaints could come from students in other schools, and that ADF is seeking special treatment for private religious schools. But Tucker notes that the city’s rule allows people to seek exceptions, and that the religious nature of the education in question here makes this a First Amendment issue. “What you don’t have at the public institutions is this question about godly or religious things,” he says. “When you inhibit that, you’re burdening religion.” He hopes, moreover, that such schools can serve as a vanguard for a broader junking of this policy for students across the district, whatever kind of school they’re in.

“Once the door hopefully is opened, perhaps others would see the inherent problem with these institutions keeping the masks on for all kids,” he says. “You don’t see that kind of dichotomy in other jurisdictions. They just open it up entirely.”

After nearly three academic years of disruption for students, it’s well past time to give them something like the normalcy of which they have been deprived.