ORLANDO, Fla. — The Biden administration Friday opened a civil rights investigation into how Florida’s mask mandate ban impacts children with disabilities, fearing those youngsters are at high risk of COVID-19 complications and may not be able to attend school because classmates are not masked.
If Florida’s ban on mask mandates means some children with disabilities cannot go to school that is a violation of federal law, wrote Suzanne Goldberg, acting assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education, in a letter to Florida’s education commissioner.
Florida’s ban on mask mandates — already the subject of several legal challenges — aims to let parents, not school districts, decide if their children wear masks at school. The rule has thrilled some parents and angered others.
