Chicago City Wire

Attorney Tom DeVore said he will be filing a restraining order against Chicago Public Schools and its CEO Pedro Martinez.

DeVore said the school system is one of a handful that is keeping its mask mandate despite an order striking down the statewide mandate.

“Any school district that is isolating children that are plaintiffs in this case – and I know that to be true – I'm going to ask the judge to put somebody in the county jail as soon as I have the first available opportunity," DeVore told Chicago City Wire. "That's what I'm going to try to do because they cannot do that. If they want to do it to children not named in the complaint, that's not a violation of the court's order."

DeVore's actions come after Sangamon County Judge Raylene Grischow deemed Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s blanket state of emergency school requirements on masks and tests through the Illinois Department of Public Health "null and void" in a 30-page judgment Friday night.

She said that the governor and his agencies were imposing rules on students without their consent.

“Statutory rights have attempted to be bypassed through the issuance of Executive Orders and Emergency Rules," she wrote. "This type of evil is exactly what the law was intended to constrain."

“Attorney Thomas Devore will be filling a petition to have Judge Grischow hold @ChiPubSchools and @PedroCPSCEO in contempt of court for violating the order,” Morning Answer co-host Amy Jacobsen said in a tweet.

Martinez is a longtime CPS employee who previously served as the superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District.

He was appointed superintendent of CPS in fall of 2021.

Former CPS CEO Paul Vallas has called on the system to be dismantled in the wake of labor disputes with the Chicago Teachers Union.

CPS is the third-largest school district in the country, responsible for 347,000 children.

"Does that Face Mask Really Protect You," a 2010 research article by Dr. Larry E. Bowen of the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Ala., fit various types of masks on a mannequin to study their effectiveness, and found that wearing surgical, bandana and dust masks offer "very little protection" and concluded that "wearing these face masks may produce a false sense of protection."

Martinez makes a base salary of $340,000 per year.