Health Freedom Def. Fund, Inc. v. Biden

Health Freedom Def. Fund, Inc. v. Biden

Opinion

ORDER

As travelers have been reminded for more than a year, federal law requires wearing a mask in airports, train stations, and other transportation hubs as well as on airplanes, buses, trains, and most other public conveyances in the United States. [*2]  Failure to comply may result in civil and criminal penalties, including removal from the conveyance. This masking requirement—commonly known as the Mask Mandate—is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regulation published in the Federal Register on February 3, 2021.

In July 2021, Sarah Pope, Ana Daza, and Health Freedom Defense Fund sued various government officials and the CDC, seeking a declaratory judgment that the Mask Mandate was unlawful and to have it set aside for violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Following submission of the administrative record, Defendants—collectively referred to as "the government"—moved for summary judgment on January 18, 2022. (Doc. 45.) As provided in the parties' agreed briefing schedule, Plaintiffs filed a cross motion for summary judgment on February 17, 2022. (Doc. 48.) The parties completed briefing on March 31, 2022. The cross motions for summary judgment are now ripe for review. The Court concludes that the Mask Mandate exceeds the CDC's statutory authority and violates the procedures required for agency rulemaking under the APA. Accordingly, the Court vacates the Mandate and remands it to the CDC.

I. BACKGROUND

In December [*3]  2019, a highly contagious respiratory virus colloquially known as COVID-19 began spreading throughout the world. A month later, the Secretary of Health and Human Services declared COVID-19 a public health emergency. See Determination That a Public Health Emergency Exists, U.S. Dep't of Health & Hum. Servs., https://www.phe.gov/emergency/news/healthactions/phe/Pages/2019-nCoV.aspx (Jan. 31, 2020). And then on March 13, 2020, President Trump declared the COVID-19 outbreak a national emergency. See Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak, 85 Fed. Reg. 15337, 15337 (Mar. 13, 2020).

COVID-19 continued to spread throughout 2020 despite experiments with "unprecedented movement restrictions and social distancing measures." (Doc. 30 at 41.) By the end of 2020, approximately twenty million Americans had been infected with COVID-19 and over 360,000 Americans had died from it. See COVID Data Tracker, Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention, https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/ (last visited Apr. 13, 2022). The fall and winter of 2020 also brought a spike in new COVID-19 infections, due in part to emerging variants of the virus, some of which were more severe than the original strain and more [*4]  easily transmissible. Id.; (Doc. 30 at 12-15). The number of new cases peaked in early January 2021 and decreased steadily in February. See COVID Data Tracker, Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention, https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases (last visited Apr. 11, 2022).

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