Hearing from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Justice will appeal the ruling of an inexperienced federal judge in Florida who issued a national repeal of the mask mandate on planes and trains, the New York Times reports.
DOJ Director of Public Affairs Anthony Coley announced on Twitter that the department had already filed an appeal after hearing from the CDC that the mask mandate would benefit public health.
Legal pundits expressed dismay at the ruling by 35-year-old Trump-appoint federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a controversial court pick confirmed after Trump had lost the 2020 election even though she was rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association because she had graduated from law school just six years before her nomination to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench. Mizelle didn’t hear any testimony in the case and made her decision based solely on the briefs submitted by both sides. In her 59-page opinion, Mizelle cited debunked conspiracy theories and made her ruling, which should have only applied to the parties in the case, a national mandate.