Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has launched a multistate legal challenge of a Biden administration masking mandate for toddlers enrolled in Head Start programs and a vaccine mandate for Head Start staff and volunteers.
The federal lawsuit was filed Dec. 21 in the Western District of Louisiana on behalf of 25 states. When he filed the lawsuit, Landry said the federal mandate would lead to cuts in funding and a loss of childcare programs for underrepresented communities.
“Like all of his other unlawful attempts to impose medical decisions on Americans, Biden’s overreaching orders to mask 2-year-olds and force-vaccinate teachers in our underserved communities will cost jobs and impede child development,” the attorney general said in a prepared statement.
The legal complaint challenges the Head Start mandate as an executive branch overreach that violates a number of federal laws, as well as the 10th Amendment of the Constitution. That amendment reserves to the states all powers that are not expressly delegated to the federal government.
Although not a party to the lawsuit, the National Head Start Association (NHSA) takes issue with the breadth of the federal mandate. The NHSA acknowledges the value of masks and vaccines in fighting the spread of COVID-19 but says a top-down policy could lead to Head Start losing tens of thousands of staff members and the closing of 1,300 Head Start classrooms.
“New Head Start policies or changes to existing policies do not happen in a vacuum,” NHSA Executive Director Yasmina Vinci said in an email to the Louisiana Record. “They must fit within the existing operational requirements, and they must be responsive to local community needs.”
NHSA would like to see more of a middle ground with local programs working with staffs to achieve higher vaccination rates and working to keep local classrooms open.
“NHSA and our state colleagues have proposed several ways to resolve the tension between the implications of the rule and the other existing requirements,” Vinci said.
The association has no plans to file an amicus brief in the multistate lawsuit, although the complaint cited NHSA survey data in making its arguments.