Stop “Civil Rights” Abuse

The American Mind ^ | 09/28/21 | Max Eden

[PoliticallyShort]

In late August, as students headed back to school, the Biden Department of Education made clear to parents what close observers had predicted: this administration defines “civil rights” as “whatever the left happens to prefer.”

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced that his Office for Civil Rights (OCR) would investigate five states that have prohibited universal mask mandates. He declared that these investigations would explore whether such prohibitions violate Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and interrogate “each state’s compliance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,” which guarantees people with disabilities “an equal opportunity to receive program benefits and services.”

The Biden administration, it seems, believes that a student has a civil right to have his school board force his peers to wear a mask.

This is a willful and arbitrary exercise of power, and a revealing one. If the political polarity of masking were reversed, one could easily imagine the Biden administration arguing that mask mandates discriminate against students with disabilities—students like Daniel Volodin, who has autism and epilepsy and is being denied in-person instruction by the Abermarle County school district because he is unable to wear a mask all day.

That argument would, in fact, have greater merit than the grounds cited by the Biden administration. No “investigation” should be necessary to determine the legal question of whether prohibiting a mask mandate violates Title II of the ADA. It either does or it doesn’t.

Furthermore, by promising to probe states for general compliance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Biden administration is all but promising open-ended harassment expeditions that would levy threat of losing federal funding until states change their masking policies.

[sauropod]

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