President Biden’s Justice Department wants to reinstate mask mandates for air travel.
The DOJ is now fighting to reinstate a federal mask mandate even though Biden previously said mask-wearing was a personal choice and declared that the “pandemic is over.”
Fox News reports: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on Tuesday from the Biden Justice Department on behalf of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to reinstate a mask mandate for air travel, after a federal judge in Florida struck down the mandate last April.
“The Department continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health. That is an important authority the Department will continue to work to preserve,” DOJ said in a statement at the time of the ruling.
The legal fight comes almost six months after the president declared that the pandemic was “over” in a television interview.
“The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it,” Biden said in a CBS interview that aired in September.
“If you notice, no one’s wearing a mask, everybody seems to be in pretty good shape,” Biden added while he walked through the Detroit Auto Show.
The fight to keep mask mandates is not a popular one among travel industry groups. The U.S. Travel Association, for example, praised the ruling from the Florida judge striking down the mandate.
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