Letter to the editor: Requiring masks is as constitutional as requiring clothes

October 15, 2021

As I had lived in the Manchester school district and substitute taught in the Manchester Schools, I am still keenly interested in the lovely community. Consequently, the opposition to mask mandates in the schools concerns and baffles me. The usual complaint, as voiced by one mother on a Detroit TV broadcast, is a liberty issue. She exclaimed repeatedly "We still live in a free country!" The preamble to the U.S. Constitution, however, gives the government the responsibility to "promote the general welfare" and the Michigan Constitution specifies, "The public health and general welfare of the people of the state are hereby declared to be matters of primary public concern. The legislature shall pass suitable laws for the protection and promotion of the public health."

The legislature thereby (in Act 368 of 1978, section 333.2435 re Local health department; additional powers) granted to local health departments the authority to "(d) Adopt regulations to properly safeguard the public health and to prevent the spread of diseases and sources of contamination." Given this responsibility, The Washtenaw County Health Department has seen fit to order a mask mandate for schools. Is the mandate necessary? Maybe. For sure it is constitutionally legal.

For those of you who feel that mask mandates are a terrible impingement on your right, consider this: Laws proscribing nudity are based on politics, not the general welfare. Will your demands for freedom extend to allowing nudity in school pools and public parks and beaches; or is your objection to a mask mandate, despite its actual basis in community welfare, not about freedom but about asserting a political doctrine?

Matthew Kerwin

Former Manchester resident and MCS substitute teacher

Member of The Naturist Society, The Michigan Nude Beach Advocates, The Washtenaw Skinnydippers, The Spiritual Naturists, The ACLU, and The Nature Conservancy.

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.