Judge tosses Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lawsuit against mask mandate

A federal judge just handed down the decision that the House’s mask mandate did not violate the First Amendment, which dismisses a case from three Republicans who sued Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Capitol Hill administrators over the measure.

Representatives Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Ralph Norman were involved in the suit. 

According to the Wednesday opinion of the judge, Reggie Walton of the DC District Court, the three Republicans “had myriad means of expressing their stated messages, including wearing masks or other clothing containing the messages they wanted to convey, or making speeches from the House Chamber or elsewhere on the subject.”

The judge added in the decision that fines incurred by members who refused to wear masks did not affect their salaries.

Walton opined that the arguments presented by the lawmakers regarding the financial penalties they faced into the thousands of dollars for each time they went without wearing a mask were “vague, generalized, and unsupported.”

The three Republicans had charged that Speaker Pelosi’s choice to institute fines in order to enforce the mandate was in violation of the 27th Amendment’s prohibitions on changes to members’ compensation without an interrupting election, in addition to the First Amendment’s protections of free speech.

Last year, Green alone had been fined upwards of $48,000 for refusing to wear a mask in the particular areas of the Capitol where the covering had been required.

The Capitol’s attending physician, late just last month, dropped the recommendation that face masks be mandated in certain parts of the Capitol, as Dr. Brian P. Monahan emphasized the declining coronavirus case levels in D.C. while making the recommendation that masks be optional.