ICYMI: The Arizona governor cannot refuse federal COVID relief dollars to schools with mask mandates, a judge has ruled.
Howard Fischer Gov. Doug Ducey cannot deny COVID-19 relief dollars to schools that impose mask mandates or give vouchers to parents so they can remove their children from those schools, a federal judge has concluded.
But Ducey press aide C.J. Karamargin said Arizona actually received its second payment of ARPA cash of about $2.1 billion last month. The first cash came from a program that divided up $163 million among Arizona school districts and charter schools that had received less than $1,800 per student under prior COVID-19 relief programs.
Anni Foster, the governor’s legal counsel, said that gives states broad latitude. She argued that Treasury impermissibly elevated public-health issues over all others. Foster also argued, unsuccessfully, that the governor’s use of the funds really does address the negative economic impact of COVID-19. She said that’s because it would mean less remote or hybrid learning which “disproportionately affected low-income and minority students.”
“Schools have every ability to encourage practices recommended by the CDC and students were not prohibited from doing so,” she wrote.
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