District No. 2 included in state lawsuit

Sweetwater County School District No. 2 is one of six school districts included in a lawsuit aiming to overturn health orders related to COVID-19.

According to the Casper Star-Tribune, the suit was filed last Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Wyoming and centers on a Laramie High School student who was arrested for trespassing after refusing to comply with the school’s mask mandate.

Grace Smith and her father Andy are joined by 17 other guardians of Wyoming students ranging in age from 4 to 17 years old.

They allege mask mandates and other orders were unfounded and claim the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 is not a significant threat to human life.

The Star-Tribune reports the suit lists Gov. Mark Gordon, State Health Officer Alexia Harrist, The Wyoming Department of Health and its interim director Stefan Johansson as defendants, as well as school districts from Sheridan, Albany, Laramie, Goshen and Uinta counties.

At the start of Tuesday’s school board meeting, Board Chairman Steve Core reminded the audience the district did not enact a mask or vaccine mandate for students and staff. He later prohibited Laura Pavey, one of the parents involved in the suit, from addressing the board during the scheduled public comment period.

“You communicate with our attorney — you’re suing us,” Core told her.

Core later said he was unable to talk about the suit, saying the board’s attorney instructed members not to comment on it.

Pavey said she brought the suit against the district because it has a duty to provide equal access to education, claiming only high school students have access to remote learning opportunities if they’re quarantined as a result of COVID-19 exposure. She claims students from kindergarten to eighth grade don’t have that same opportunity, but are expected at the end of their quarantine period to keep up with students who remain in school.

She also said she doesn’t want to see children being coerced into wearing masks when they’re not as susceptible to COVID-19’s more severe symptoms.

“I know COVID is real, but in 700 days no child has been hospitalized,” she said.

Deb Sutton, public information officer for Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County, said the hospital saw 22 COVID-19 patients in September and October between the ages of 6 weeks and 17 years old. She said two of those patients were transferred to regional hospitals for higher levels of care.

 

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