Mask-wearers on U.S. flights today find themselves a solid
minority, and travelers largely can thank—or blame, depending on their masking
stance—a Florida district court ruling for the quick erosion of airline mask
mandates.
On April 18, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle
struck down the federal mask mandate for passengers on airlines and other forms
of public transportation, ruling that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention was not justified in the order and did not implement it under proper
federal procedures. In short order, U.S. carriers dropped their masking
requirements, as did Amtrak, Uber and Lyft.
Mizelle was a relative newcomer to the federal bench when
she made the ruling, having been nominated by former President Donald Trump in
September 2020. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 49-to-41 vote later
that year, despite objections from the American Bar Association that the then
33-year-old did not have enough law experience for a federal judgeship.
The CDC maintained its recommendation that passengers wear
masks on airlines, but that advice was not heeded for long. In a column for
Forbes last June, former Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza said that while a
majority of passengers continued to wear masks for about a week after the
ruling, that quickly dropped off in subsequent weeks. It was not surprising,
given that a TripIt survey of more than 700 users released a few weeks before
the ruling showed that 54 percent said they were ready for the mask mandate to
expire.
The ruling also put the federal government in a weaker
position for such mandates in the future, according to Baldanza.
"Re-introducing a federal mandate would come with a
large thud and likely quicker legal action to fight it," he wrote. "Even
though not everyone makes the right personal decisions, there is a cultural
aversion to being told what to do."
Since the ruling, mask requirements for airlines
have been easing around the world, albeit in a less dramatic fashion. The
European Union removed
its recommendation that face masks be mandatory aboard aircraft in May, and
the Canadian government ended its masking requirements on Oct. 1. A few
countries still are bucking the trend, however, such as Brazil, which in
November reinstated mask requirements for airlines and airports.