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Carlisle residents who were big mad about face masks in 2021 still big mad, hope Supreme Court will listen to them when other courts told them to go away

A group of residents in the Concord suburb of Carlisle are hoping the Supreme Court can deliver the righteous retribution they feel their hamlet deserves for daring to require people to wear masks when entering the town library or other public indoor spaces for a few months at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rebuffed by both a federal judge and a federal appeals court, both of whom said the masking requirement was a responsible reaction to a fast-spreading, deadly pandemic, the residents asked the nation's highest court to rule otherwise. The court put the case on its docket this week, which means it will consider whether to hear arguments in the case, not that it will actually do so.

The then dozen residents, now down to seven, filed their pro se suit in US District Court in Boston on Nov. 4, 2021 against town employees and officials, including the town health agent and the town library director, because of the way the library barred maskless patrons and then how the board of health decided in August, 2021 to bar the unmasked in all public spaces in town - with an exception for people who could prove a medical objection.

Citing what they claimed were state, federal and UN regulations and a Wall Street Journal article, the residents' complaint blasted this as a blatant violation of their right to bare faces, that the board of health had no authority at all to require masks. And that even if it did, they argued, Covid-19 was hardly that severe of a public-health threat to warrant violating their basic human rights, let alone to have the library discriminate against them in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, because the library policy made no mention of medical exceptions.

And, the residents continued, in their mad zeal to suppress the virus "at all costs," town functionaries had actually worsened public health and were subjecting innocent townfolk to "uninformed medical experimentation without disclosing known harms."

In September, 2022, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs agreed with the town to dismiss the case.

Boards of health in Massachusetts do so have the right to enact emergency public-health regulations, especially given that the governor had himself issued an emergency declaration on the topic, Burroughs wrote - noting also a 1905 Supreme Court decision involving a Cambridge minister who didn't want his sons vaccinated against smallpox during an outbreak, which gave states the right to declare public-health emergencies. Covid-19 not that serious? Please, she concluded, if with a bit more legal verbiage.

Defendants responsibly relied on guidance from state and federal officials, including "overwhelming medical evidence" regarding the utility of face masks in reducing the spread of COVID-19. ... Nothing in the record suggests that Defendants' actions, whether it be the BOH mask mandate or the Library mask mandate, were unreasonable or unsupported. The fact that there was only one reported COVID-19-related death in Carlisle around the time the mandate was implemented does not alter this conclusion, where the BOH was being confronted with state data reporting an uptick in breakthrough cases and increased hospitalizations due to the Delta variant, even in places with high vaccination rates.

Even aside from the fact the board of health rescinded the requirement on Feb. 23, 2022, making their case moot, and the fact that the board of health had the right to require masking, the residents might not have had "standing" to sue over damages they supposedly suffered, since only one of them claimed to have actually tried to enter the library maskless and was asked to put one on, she wrote in her ruling, which uses many of the same legal arguments as those of another federal judge who dismissed a similar case against Boston's indoor masking requirement.

Burroughs also dismissed their Constitutional arguments, such as that the measure violated their First Amendment freedom to assemble and their right to due process.

Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the mask mandates implicated a fundamental right or were an irrational response to COVID-19.

The residents appealed, but in a much shorter opinion on April 18 of this year, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston upheld Burroughs' ruling, saying it fully concurred with Burroughs and that:

To the extent that intervening caselaw may have strengthened the claim for damages from the Board's rescinded mandate, that possibility (concerning which we express no opinion) only underscores the fact that no clearly established Constitutional right was violated by appellees during the period in question.

Undeterred, earlier this month, the residents filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking it to hear the case.


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Comments

Install no less than 8 courts in immediate proximity to each of their homes.

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Voting closed 82

A nudist camp with pickleball courts!

If you can't make them wear masks, they cant make the pickleball players wear clothes!

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Voting closed 55

The town is also famous for having some residents who go lipshit about the recreational cyclists who frequent the quiet roads on weekends. Tensions have cooled off a bit but for years a small group of residents was trying everything to make bike riders unwelcome if not outright prohibited. There is a small town paper, the Carlisle Mosquito, which seems like it could have been the inspiration for the Daily Prophet in Harry Potter.

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Voting closed 35

Willing to bet that they are the same assholes who have thrown similar tantrums in Wellfleet.

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Voting closed 27

Didn't Boxford do something like that years ago? Never experienced it personally, but heard about it. I think maybe their issue was organized rides going thru town and marking the route on the pavement.

Regardless, if bicycles riding on your roads get your panties in a twist, you need a serious dose of reality.

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Voting closed 24

That was quite a while ago. I believe some retired lawyer cyclists may have taken care of that.

Wilmington also got sued when their cops forced a cyclist off the road and arrested them for cycling on the road. They made up laws out of their asses and doubled down in court when informed of the actual state laws.

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Voting closed 14

Lol.

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Voting closed 25

The then dozen residents, now down to seven, filed...

Inquiring (and obnoxious) minds gotta ask - did the other five move away? It'd be... Darwinesque if something non-coincidental, like maybe a pandemic, had struck them down.

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Voting closed 45

I know one of the original filers runs a landscaping business with plenty of contracts in town. Once the lawsuit was filed, people started switching to other options. This caused them to remove their names from the lawsuit. Carlisle is very liberal, but every town has its share of crazies. Some of the people on this lawsuit picket the annual schools pride day. Imagine standing outside a elementary school with a sign condemning those that participate. I won't comment on the bikers but the roads are very narrow and a few bikers who love to ride side by side with their crew give the others a bad name.

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Voting closed 7

Was the Carlisle dude who collected millions of dollars of Covid relief funds anti mask?

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Voting closed 6

I spotted a typo in the title of this article: it's actually spelled "Rich Suburbanites Need Hobby".

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Voting closed 4