With the Delta variant of COVID-19 on the rise, public and private institutions are considering putting in place any number of protocols to mitigate the spread of the virus, including reinstating mask and social distancing requirements.
Among those institutions are public schools, some of which are going with a mask requirement, and State Rep. Andrew Sorrell (R-Muscle Shoals) seeks to stop schools from preschool to the 12th grade from doing so.
Sorrell, who is also running for State Auditor in 2022, explained on Huntsville radio WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program” that he was prompted by a Huntsville-based group called “Unmask Our Kids” to file legislation that would prohibit mask requirements for schoolchildren and argued Gov. Kay Ivey should allow for his bill to be considered in a special session this year.
“Yesterday, I sent in a request to get the bill drafted,” he said. “I just decided to do this bill two days ago. And to be honest, I was asked to do this bill 7-10 days ago by people from this group. I said, let me think about it. I’m not sure, you know. And it’s not that I didn’t support the bill, or I’m not fired up about the bill. I’m just busy. I did 19 bills last year, and I thought I’ve got enough on my plate. But you know, no one else has stepped up to do the bill. So, at some point, somebody has got to do this if this issue is important enough, and finally, I contacted this group and said, ‘I will do this bill. What do you want it to say?’ And we had a discussion about that.”
“Let me tell you what the bill does: It’s going to say preschool through 12th grade cannot require mask mandates in schools,” Sorrell continued. “I’m not going after universities. I know that might be somewhat of a controversial decision. But my thought is at least you can choose to go to a different university. You have no school choice in Alabama. You go where you live, and if they say you’ve got to wear a mask, you’ve got to wear a mask. So, we’re going to make this apply to preschool through 12th grade, and we’re not going to apply it to universities.”
Sorrell said he was awaiting a draft of the bill from legislative services before he sought out co-sponsors for the legislative.
“[I]’m going to call on Governor Kay Ivey to bring forward my mask mandate school bill before a special session of the legislature because we don’t go back into session until January,” Sorrell added. “If this bill doesn’t get dealt with until January, the school year will almost be over by the time it has a chance to pass. We need this dealt with now. We’re already going into special session at least once for redistricting in October. We need to go ahead and knock this out.”
Sorrell downplayed the merits of an Ivey executive order to ban mask mandates. While he said it was possible Ivey could use an executive order, Sorrell explained his bill was modeled after the order from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) but added it preferable to be done through the legislative process.
“[I] would prefer that Kay Ivey just let the legislature simply deal with it — call us into a special session or include it in the call of a special that we’re already going to have,” he said. “Now, I’m going to introduce this bill in a special session whether it’s in the call or not because I think this bill deserves to have a shot, and it deserves to have a shot this fall. But if it’s not included in the call of the Governor’s session, it requires a much higher threshold of votes to pass the legislature than if the Governor includes it in the call of the session. For that reason, I think it’s important for people to reach out to their legislators to support this bill, and I think it’s important to reach out to the Governor to include this in the call of the special.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
