School districts, state seek dismissal of mask lawsuit

School districts, state seek dismissal of mask lawsuit
 
By Ellen Gerst
Casper Star-Tribune
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
CASPER — Five Wyoming school districts and the state health department are asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a Laramie high schooler and several other parents contesting school mask mandates and state COVID policies.
In court filings, lawyers for the defendants say the case should not be in federal court, did not sufficiently make claims for relief and failed to state its core allegations concisely.

 
The 128-page complaint was filed on Nov. 2 by Grace Smith, a former Laramie High School student who was arrested for trespassing after being suspended for refusing to comply with the school’s mask mandate. Her father, Andy, and the guardians of 17 other Wyoming students join Smith in the suit.
 
The suit alleges that health orders from the governor’s office and the Wyoming Department of Health were outside the bounds of the agencies’ authority and were not based on scientific fact.
As defendants, it names Gov. Mark Gordon, school districts in Sheridan, Albany, Laramie, Goshen, Sweetwater and Uinta counties, the Sheridan Police Department, the Wyoming Department of Health and its interim director, Stefan Johansson, and state health officer Alexia Harrist.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court, which typically deals with matters of federal law or constitutionality, cases where the federal government is named or where the parties are from more than one state.
In moving to dismiss this suit, lawyers noted that the complaint takes issue with state statutes and the Wyoming constitution, rather than federal law, and all parties are in Wyoming.
Responses to the complaint also state that it failed to demonstrate Smith’s or the other plaintiffs’ entitlement to relief based on their claims.
Several of the other plaintiffs, mostly parents, submitted statements with the suit saying their children had faced harassment and bullying at school for not wearing masks. In some cases, the plaintiffs said, their kids also suffered physical or mental injury including headaches, anxiety attacks and difficulty breathing from face masks.
The original suit also includes 100 unnamed Jane or John Does as defendants, and appears to sue all of its defendants with all 14 of its claims.
The response filed by the Sheridan County School District No. 2 states it is “improper” to lump all the named parties and claims in one suit, since it refers to actions taken by the health department, governor’s office and six different school districts.
“It is obvious that Petitioners are trying to use this lawsuit and the federal court as a stage for their political stance regarding Covid 19,” the school district’s response, filed on Nov. 19, says.
A response from the health department states that the suit did not name a “specific legally protected interest that has been harmed” by the policies in question.
Other filings call the complaint a “verbose, unorganized, and overly long diatribe,” which they note federal judges tend to condemn.
An attorney for the Uinta County School District No. 6 said in their response that the lawsuit cited ‘a burdensome number of attachments and appendices, the relevance of which is questionable.” To support its allegations, the suit refers to a number of blogs, news and opinion websites and the Tom Cruise film “Minority Report.”
One of the defendants, the Sheridan Police Department, also said in its filing that the suit was not properly served since it was given to a records technician without the authority to accept service of a lawsuit. The department states that there has been no return of service filed, and the plaintiff’s attorney has not responded to their questions since mid-November.
That attorney, Buffalo’s Nick Beduhn, also sued the governor and state health officials earlier this year, disputing all COVID-19 orders and restrictions in Wyoming. The suit was dismissed two months later by a judge in Johnson County.
In 2017, the Wyoming Supreme Court issued two orders suspending Beduhn from practicing law for a total of two and a half years. The Wyoming State Bar said Beduhn violated his professional duties of “competence, diligence, and maintaining communication with clients.”
In October, Grace Smith drew national attention when she was trespassed from Laramie High School after violating her third suspension based on her refusal to wear a mask on campus. She was issued a pair of $500 citations for trespassing, according to the complaint, but one has since been dismissed.
The only defendants yet to respond are Gordon and Smith’s own school district in Albany County. According to the case’s docket, they have until Dec. 16 to file answers.