North Cook News

Attorney General candidate Tom DeVore has noted Evanston High School District 202's recently reinstalled mask mandate is still unconditional despite the school district's actions otherwise. 

DeVore soared to popularity earlier this year after leading the charge as an attorney for a group of plaintiffs whose efforts resulted in the determination that masking was unconstitutional.

"A few of these other school districts — maybe now Evanston — are following suit of trying to say, 'oh, we're just following the guidance of the Department of Health,'" DeVore told North Cook News. "And so if your kid in some alleged close contact, they make them stay home for five days and then you come back, you've got to wear a mask and it's all completely beyond their authority. But, you know, there's no court that's ever said they have that authority. You don't have the authority, but unless there's actually a restraining order in place saying, 'You can't do this.' We're going to keep pushing the envelope anyway because they don't care." 

The Evanston High School District 202 chose this week to resume mandatory masking for its more than 3,700 students, North Cook News reported previously.  

"All ETHS students and staff — regardless of vaccination status — will be required to wear masks indoors at this time. Should conditions change, ETHS will adjust and communicate updates," the notice said. 

The school district also called for "students and staff" to hold each other in "loving accountability" for wearing masks, North Cook News reported. While a few school districts have changed their minds about masking, the majority appear to be following court rulings declaring the practice illegal. State law allows only local health authorities, not school officials, to implement such quarantine measures. That rule appears to have been lost on many school districts which – in cases like Evanston High School — has led to such breaches.

According to a report from ianmsc.substack.com, mask regulations contradict scholarly results. One recent research that aimed to study the correlation between mask usage against morbidity and mortality rates in 35 countries in Europe found "that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage."

Sweden notably shunned masking at the outset of the pandemic, the report said, instead opting for less strict pandemic efforts. The World Health Organization recently noted the country had one of the lowest Covid mortality rates and fared much better than those European countries that instituted stringent lockdown and masking measures, some of which are still in place.

The Illinois Department of Public Health suggests masking for all students on its website. Despite a judge's ruling on Feb. 4 that the practice was unconstitutional, IDPH did not update its policy removing mandatory masking from classrooms until Feb. 28. The organization continues to promote a "decision tree" that includes quarantining healthy students, which is illegal unless local health departments provide individual formal orders requiring children to wear masks on a case-by-case basis or barring children from attending school.