School Face Mask Lawsuit Dropped In Sarasota County

SARASOTA COUNTY, FL — A group of parents suing the Sarasota County School Board for its mandatory face mask policy dropped its lawsuit Tuesday, said attorney Patrick Leduc.

Leduc represented the plaintiffs in the case, Sarasota County parents Amy Cook, Gustavo Collazo, Nicholas Eastman and Catherine Gonzales.

They decided to voluntarily dismiss the case Tuesday ahead of a hearing scheduled at 3:30 p.m. that day after Leduc learned another court had ruled against the plaintiffs he represented in a similar case against the Indian River County School District. The Sarasota school board had a pending motion to dismiss the case going into Tuesday’s hearing.

Leduc represented plaintiffs opposing school mask mandates in similar cases in five school districts — Sarasota County Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools, Indian River County School District, Brevard Public Schools and Lee Public Schools.

The ruling in the Indian River case was the third “adverse” decision in the matter, he said. Judges in the Brevard and Hillsborough cases also ruled against him, he added. He voluntarily dismissed the Lee County case Wednesday.

“Three strikes and you’re out,” Leduc said, though he disagrees with the courts’ decisions.

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In the Hillsborough County case, “the courts found that education is not a fundamental right, which means the school board can do whatever they want as long as they have a rationale,” he said.

It doesn’t matter if their reason “is accurate or true,” he said. “If they have a rationale, they can do it.”

Leduc added, “The lessons to the citizens of Florida is to be careful who you vote for in these school board elections because they’ve got the power and the courts side with them.”

He maintains the argument that masks “don’t work,” adding that “the flu is four times more deadly than COVID and we don’t make kids wear masks for the flu.”

Locally, “I think what the people in Sarasota need to understand is this is not just a group of parents that are rabble-rousing…This was a legitimate lawsuit and a legitimate argument,” Leduc said. “It’s about more than just a mask. What if the school board says kids have to wear a mask forever? They have the power. All they need is the reason.”

The four Sarasota parents filed their lawsuit against the school board Oct. 21 in the 12th Judicial Circuit Court in Sarasota after the board extended the district’s mask mandate for students, staff and teachers in a 3-2 vote.

The mandate was originally enacted ahead of the 2020-21 school year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Masks covering the mouth and nose are required whenever anyone is indoors on Sarasota County Schools property.

The parents involved in the lawsuit raised more than $11,000 to put towards legal fees, according to their GoFundMe campaign.

Cook, the GoFundMe organizer, posted to the campaign’s page Tuesday asking contributors to share stories of children being mistreated at school for mask exceptions and similar matters with the school board and superintendent.

“If they do not know something is happening, it cannot be addressed, even if we don't expect them to fix the issue, at least it is on public record and we can have their emails reviewed at any time,” she wrote. “We need to hold these people accountable, and the only way we can do that is document, document, document the data wherever we can.”

She added, “This fight is not over but spring is coming and we can look forward to better things that are coming.”

Patch contacted Sarasota County Schools and Cook for additional comments. Patch also made requests through Brevard, Hillsborough, Indian River, Lee and Sarasota counties for documents related to school mask court cases.