Leave aside whether you like the result — ending the mask requirement on planes, trains and other modes of mass transit — no one should support how the federal mandate came to be struck down this week.
First, consider the order itself, from a federal district judge in Florida. It's 59 pages of rambling pseudoscience and conservative textualism-run-amok, delving into what a long-ago Congress meant by "sanitation" in the vast Public Health Service Act of 1944.
Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle gave the statute her own inane spin. "Wearing a mask cleans nothing," she concluded. "At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither 'sanitizes' the person wearing the mask nor 'sanitizes' the conveyance."
