Minooka High School board weighs lawsuit against Gov. JB Pritzker over mask mandate, but takes no action

The Minooka Community High School District 111 Board took no action during its meeting this week to discuss a possible lawsuit against Gov. JB Pritzker.

While the district did not explicitly state the reason for a potential lawsuit, much of the discussion and public comments on Monday night centered on whether the district should comply with Pritzker’s executive order requiring students in all Illinois schools wear masks amid rising COVID-19 cases.

More than 20 people spoke with varying opinions on whether the district should abide by the governor’s mandate. Still, several teachers and recent alumni argued masks should be worn to protect students and staff, according to the district’s summary of the meeting.

Dave Barney, president of the local teacher’s union, pointed out the board approved a resolution last month to follow federal and state public health guidelines. He added that union members are not in favor of refusing to follow the guidelines or suing Pritzker.

When asked for his opinion, Superintendent Kenny Lee said he would recommend the board continue to follow its own resolution. He specifically pointed to one item that states the board “will not hesitate” to make changes to “ensure the health and safety of all students and staff” if public health data requires increased mitigations.

The board concurred with Lee’s recommendation and declined to take action on a lawsuit.

John Guistat, a Republican candidate for the Will County Board, published a Facebook video after the meeting in which he criticized the district’s decision not to pursue a lawsuit.

“I was pretty disappointed by that,” Guistat said. “My thought is if you were just planning on caving in anyway, I don’t understand why you would even have the meeting.”

Republicans across the state have blasted Pritzker’s executive order.

State Rep. David Allen Welter, R-Morris, whose district includes parts of Minooka, said in a Facebook post on Monday he opposed the governor “unilaterally issuing statewide mandates of any kind without a vote by the people’s elected representatives in the General Assembly.”

“We are a democracy, not an autocracy,” Welter said. “No single individual should be allowed to exercise unchecked power the way the governor has since the onset of the pandemic.”

Still, the district published a letter it received from attorney John Fester, of the firm Himes, Petrarca & Fester, in which he spelled out Pritzker’s legal authority to issue such executive orders. Fester wrote the governor’s authority comes from the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act, passed by the General Assembly, which applies when a disaster is declared.

“Given the substantial loss of life, and devastating economic impact of the pandemic, there is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic qualifies as a disaster and activates the governor’s powers under Section 7 of the Act,” Fester wrote.

The new mandate came as transmission of COVID-19 was significantly increasing in the region and across the state in just the last month as the highly contagious delta variant spread.

Will County’s rolling average COVID-19 test positivity rate stood at 6.8% as of Saturday, according to Illinois Department of Public Health data. Just one month before, on July 7, the county’s positivity rate was 1.2%.

Grundy County’s test positivity rate was 7% as of Saturday. One month ago, the county’s positivity rate was 1.2%.