Chicago City Wire

City of Chicago officials have announced the city will soon end its mask mandate and become mask optional as of Feb. 28.

In making the announcement, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady added while joining the state in lifting the mandate authorities plan to proceed with caution.

“We don't want to move too soon,” Arwady said at a press conference. “We always expect as we lift some mitigations that we'll see a little bit of a resurgence. One of the reasons why we don't want to move too soon is to make sure that at the time that we lift (the mandate), we can tolerate a little bit of an increase there.”

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot later tweeted “Folks, thanks to the ongoing progress we’re making coming out of the Omicron surge, we’ll remove the mask mandate and vax requirement for certain public locations on February 28.”

The move comes just days after Sangamon County Circuit Judge Raylene Grischow issued a temporary restraining order effectively ending enforcement of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s executive orders mandating masks in schools along with weekly testing of unvaccinated school employees and quarantining of students and teachers who are close contacts of confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases.

As part of her 30-page ruling, Grischow wrote state law declares the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) as the “supreme authority” in matters of quarantine and isolation, not the governor. She further asserted IDPH must follow state law regarding procedures to comply with due process requirements.

While more than 550 school districts have gone fully mask-optional since the judge’s decision, the governor is appealing the decision, with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul filing paperwork seeking an expedited review.

Prior to the court ruling, Pritzker had announced plans to lift the general statewide mask mandate by month’s end. The governor has been largely noncommittal about plans for the order mandating masks in schools.   

Grischow also recently ordered Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Pedro Martinez to appear before the court to answer a contempt of court complaint on CPS’ behalf.

"It is ordered that Mr. Pedro Martinez, as agent for the City of Chicago School District #299, and the Board of Education of City of Chicago School District #299, shall personally appear before this court and show cause as to why the defendants should not be held in contempt for failure to abide by and comply with this Court's prior order of February 4, 2022," Grischow’s Feb. 14 order reads.

CPS was one of 145 defendant school districts sued by parents across the state seeking to end masking. As the cases made their way through the system, attorney Tom DeVore threatened to sue the country’s third-largest district (347,000 students) on the grounds of not obeying a restraining order preventing the district from treating students who unmask differently from those who continue to mask.

Senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie (R-Lake Zurich) has accused the governor of trying to subvert the state’s court to keep his policy in place.  

"In his quest for power at all costs, the Governor attempted to go above the judicial system to continue to require masks in schools, a move that even his Democrat allies in the legislature wouldn’t support. Even they agree he has gone too far," he said in a statement. "Today, the Governor was willing to add to the confusion and chaos that has overwhelmed our schools and parents in the last several days.”

Pritzker’s last emergency rule attempt also failed to gain the support of legislators, with members of the Joint Commission on Administrative Rules (JCAR) unanimously rejecting it by a 9-0-2 vote.  

Quarantining young people has been linked to increases in depression, with emergency room visits among students for suspected suicide attempts having jumped by 31 percent since the start of the pandemic and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association now having declared children's mental health "national emergency."