The Gavel Project in the News
Southern California Parents Fight Against Mask Mandates for Kids in Schools
The Epoch Times writes, “Southern California parents are fighting back against school COVID-19 rules, including mask mandates, quarantining and testing, filing lawsuits claiming that children are being harmed and their civil rights are being violated.”
Our client is featured at the beginning of this article.
From the article:
Irvine Parent Tiffany Craft said she escorted her second-grade daughter to her Cypress Village Elementary school classroom on Jan. 14 unmasked in an act of civil disobedience.
The move came after district spokeswoman Raianna Chavez told Craft that she and her daughter could face arrest for violating the mandate.
“[E]lecting to violate the required mask mandate would mean significant legal, financial, and liability risks not to mention both civil and criminal liability/charges,” Chavez wrote to Craft in a Jan. 10 email.
Since then, an attorney for the Craft family demanded the school abandon the mask mandate or face personal civil rights violation lawsuits.
Ultimately, Craft’s daughter was not allowed to enter the classroom despite the mother explaining that wearing a mask had a detrimental impact on her child’s health and wellbeing by affecting “her learning, hearing, and concentration.”
Craft is now working with The Gavel Project, a non-profit civil rights firm, which plans to file suit against the district in the coming weeks.
“Her daughter engaged in active peaceful civil disobedience by exercising her free speech rights to refuse to wear an article of clothing, and she was disciplined for it by the Irvine Unified School District, barred from entering class and was thereby suspended from having an education,” Ryan Heath, founder of The Gavel Project, told The Epoch Times.
Heath asserted the school girl’s rights are protected by the U.S. Constitution and backed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Any citizen … has the absolute right to refuse to comply with COVID-19 mandates generally, because the act of refusal is an act of free speech,” Heath said. “It’s the same thing as burning an American flag in the park or refusing to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Read the full article, including other parents fighting back against COVID-10 rules.
Note: All of our posts are shared with all subscribers. If you like what we’re doing, please consider supporting our efforts with a monthly, annual, of founding member subscription.