Wisconsin Mask Mandate Lawsuit
Waukesha School District is at the center of a controversy over masks. Photo from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Shannon O’Dwyer
On October 5th, 2021, Attorney Federick Melms filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of parent Shannon Jensen against the K-12 Waukesha School District. The lawsuit is taking action against schools who have not implemented CDC recommendations for masking and contact tracing in an attempt to get schools in WI to use better mitigation methods to control the spread of COVID-19. This lawsuit came about after Jensen’s son contracted COVID-19 symptoms after being exposed to a fellow classmate due to the district’s lax mitigation protocols. A few days later, another parent named Gina Kildah filed a separate lawsuit against the Fall Creek School District once her seven year old son contracted the virus.
Kildah states, “By bringing students back to class around unmasked staff, reinstituting extracurricular activities, and allowing potentially contagious visitors and volunteers into the schools without masks, FCSD and the Board threw students into a Covid-19 'snake pit.'”
Jensen’s lawsuit is a response to how the local parent frustration continues to grow against school boards with little to no policies on quarantining, mask wearing, and social distancing, especially in elementary and middle schools. The lawsuit states, “The Waukesha School Board on May 12 removed the mask requirement and many other COVID-19 mitigation measures that were in place for most of the 2020-21 school year. Despite that decision, Jensen’s son, a student at Rose Glen Elementary School, and his two younger brothers wore masks to school while many of their classmates did not.” On September 16-17, a classmate of Jensen’s oldest son arrived at school with COVID-19 symptoms. Jensen’s son sat next to the ill classmate (who was not wearing a mask) and on the 19th, developed symptoms himself. Following this, Jensen and her sons quarantined at home and all tested positive for COVID-19.
According to Jensen, the Waukesha School District had been sending out notifications informing parents about students who had tested positive, typically several days before. In her oldest son’s class, at least four students tested positive for the virus before information from the district was released.
Kirk Bangstad, owner of the Minocqua Brewing Company, has previously been extremely vocal about his frustration with former President Donald Trump’s administrative response to the pandemic. According the the company’s website, he formed the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC dedicated “to remove[ing] Republican federal and state elected officials who perpetrated the election lies that caused the Insurrection of Jan, 6, 2021, and whose downplaying of the seriousness of Covid-19 caused so many unnecessary deaths in our country.” Since the formation, the group has decided to fund the lawsuit of Jensen against the Waukesha School District.
According to Minocqua Brewing Company’s post, the lawsuit is being issued to the school board, “...for not adhering to the CDC guidelines for proper masking, social distancing, contact tracing, and quarantining.” The group planned to then issue another complaint to grant “immediate injunction to force Waukesha to comply with CDC guidelines.” The post continues to describe how the lawsuit will continue until the FDA approves the vaccination of young children, but until then, the lawsuit will be supported by over $50K raised by the Super PAC. This class action lawsuit plans to encompass any Wisconsin schools not adhering to the CDC guidelines; therefore, any school could be affected by this.
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