Riverhead Central School District has been sued by two parents for requiring students to wear masks in schools after a Nassau judge last January ruled the State Health Department’s mask mandate “null, void and unenforceable as a matter of law.”
Monique Parsons, the mother two students in the district, and Jennifer Venth, the mother of one child in the district, brought the action in State Supreme Court, Suffolk County.
The parents accuse the district and several officials of violating New York Civil Rights Law by requiring their children, who according to the complaint could not tolerate masks, to wear the face coverings at Pulaski Street School and Riverhead Middle School.
The parents complain that the district’s COVID-19 masking protocols, established in August 2021, are “cruel, unusual ad illogical,” and that the masking policy harmed their children.
Parsons’ and Venth’s children went to school without masks on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022, the day after the Nassau judge’s ruling.
School administrators would not allow the plaintiffs’ children to attend class, though they were not infected with and showed no signs of being infected with COVID-19, according to the lawsuit. District officials instead kept the children in segregated classrooms, violating state civil rights law protections against discrimination based on the children’s disability, class and socioeconomic status, the complaint states.
The complaint accuses the Pulaski Street and middle school building principals with unlawful imprisonment by confining the students to the segregated classrooms “against their will when they chose to be mask-free.”
The lawsuit also accuses the district, the board of education, the principals and one teacher of negligent infliction of emotional distress, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and endangering the welfare of a child.
It seeks monetary damages for each of the 15 alleged counts of violating the state civil rights law and for the alleged emotional distress and endangering the welfare claims. The suit also seeks punitive damages “as retribution for … outrageous and egregious conduct as well as to serve as an example to prevent school districts from harming students under the guise of furthering the public good.”
The lawsuit was brought by attorney Chad Laveglia of Uniondale, who was the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Nassau County suit that led to the Jan. 24 decision annulling the State Department of Health’s mask mandate.
Laveglia did not return a phone call seeking comment for this article.
The Riverhead Central School District, the board of education, building principals and a teacher named in the Parsons/Venth complaint deny the plaintiffs’ allegations. The attorney representing the defendants, Deanna Collins of Silverman & Associates in White Plains, New York, declined to comment on pending litigation.
Immediately after the Jan. 24 decision by Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Thomas Rademaker holding that the state health commissioner lacked legal authority to mandate masks, State Attorney General Letitia James, on behalf of the governor and the state health department, filed a notice of appeal. The State Education Department that night sent a statement to school districts advising them to continue the mask mandate.
Although several school districts across Long Island notified parents that masks would then be optional, the Riverhead Central School District sent out a robocall that night (Jan. 24) advising families that masks would still be required in school buildings, as per the State Education Department’s statement.
The next day, an appellate court judge issued a temporary stay of the Nassau judge’s ruling, meaning that the decision annulling the statewide mask mandate could not be enforced pending review and decision by a panel of appellate judges the following week.
On Jan. 31, a four-judge panel of State Appellate Division sided with the attorney general and granted a stay of enforcement of the trial court’s order pending the outcome of the state’s appeal. Thus, the statewide mask mandate, which was then set to expire on Feb. 10, remained in effect.
On Feb. 9, Gov. Kathy Hochul lifted the mask mandate for most indoor public spaces. A separate mask mandate would continue in schools, the governor announced, until at least the midwinter break. Hochul said at the time that if COVID-19 infections continued to decline from the numbers seen during the winter surge last year, when cases hit record-setting levels, there was a “very strong possibility” that the safety protocols in schools would be lifted.
On Sunday, Feb. 27, the governor announced that the mask mandate would be lifted in New York schools as of Wednesday, March 2.
On Monday, Feb. 28, the Riverhead Board of Education, at a special meeting, voted unanimously to end the mask mandate in Riverhead schools on Wednesday, March 2.
The state’s mask mandate and many other COVID-19 orders and protocols were controversial from the outset and became a hot-button political issue in New York as the coronavirus pandemic entered its third year last winter.
Parsons, who unsuccessfully sought a seat on the Riverhead school board in May 2021, spoke out against the district’s reopening plan, which included universal masking and other protocols recommended at the time by state health and education officials as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The school board on Aug. 17, 2021 voted 4-3 to adopt a reopening plan that included universal indoor masking in Riverhead schools. One of the dissenters, Trustee Christopher Dorr, subsequently urged the school board to join the lawsuit brought in Nassau County by the Massapequa and Locust Valley school district, which led to Judge Rademaker’s decision last January.
When the Riverhead school district did not lift the mask mandate following the Nassau County court’s decision, Parsons helped organize two protests, one outside the district office attended by about two dozen people on Jan. 25 and another outside Riverhead High School on Jan. 27 that drew about 50, including members of the Long Island Loud Majority.
Parsons said at the second protest that she thought there were “about 40 or 50 students” isolated because they did not wear masks to school. One high school student at the Jan. 27 protest said she had been sent home because she went to school without a mask.
“They’re segregating them. They’re not educating them. And it’s unacceptable and unconstitutional,” Parsons said.
“People are going to restaurants, they’re going to indoor shows, they’re going to concerts, they’re going to a million other places without a mask on. But all of a sudden, inside the school is supposedly not the safest place to be. That’s not a thing,” she said.
The lawsuit was served on the school district in December. The district filed its answer on Jan. 6.
While the Nassau County Supreme Court’s decision never took effect due to the stay issued by the Appellate Division, and the state subsequently lifted the mask mandate, the appeal remains pending. At issue is the constitutionality of the actions taken by the state’s executive branch — the governor and the health department — to control the COVID-19 pandemic, including the mask mandate.
Assembly Member Jodi Giglio (R-Baiting Hollow) and State Senator Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk) were among 41 Republican state legislators who filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief asking the Appellate Division to uphold the Nassau Supreme Court ruling. The City of New York filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the state.
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