ATLANTA — In the State Senate, Georgia Republicans have introduced a bill that would give more teeth to a controversial law eliminating mask mandates in schools.
Republicans have long bemoaned mandates for masks on school children. Last year, Republican lawmakers passed a bill that would forbid school districts from requiring masks.
"Georgia and America are moving safely out of the global pandemic and we need to begin to return to normal," State Sen. Clint Dixon (R-Buford) said, during a Senate debate in March 2021. "And this is a first step in doing so."
That bill passed on party lines but it had a sunset provision – providing some wiggle room in case the COVID pandemic made a roaring comeback.
Now, Republicans want to eliminate that provision in SB1.
"For those celebrating the post-COVID period, I have bad news for them. We’re not post-COVID," Georgia State University public health specialist Dr. Harry Heiman said.
Heiman said the pandemic has abated – but that Senate Republicans are declaring victory over the pandemic too quickly.
"This is a bad bill," Democratic State Sen. David Lucas said in 2022 during a debate on the original bill. When that bill passed last year, Democrats argued it was too soon and it hamstrung school boards from making rules to curb the spread of COVID.
The new anti-mask bill would require the state to make that call – or parents themselves – if the pandemic were to surge again.
"If we learned nothing else from this pandemic, it’s that it’s a stealthy adversary. And it’s not going away," Heiman said. "And every time we thought it was going away, and we went from crisis to complacency and we went back to crisis again."
SB1 has the support of the State Senate’s GOP leadership, giving it priority treatment in the 2023 session.