Missouri AG misses deadline in KC-area mask mandate lawsuit, blames ‘excusable neglect’
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office says “excusable neglect” is the reason it missed a court deadline in a lawsuit challenging Lee’s Summit schools’ now-expired mask mandate.
The Republican attorney general, a candidate for U.S. Senate, sued dozens of districts in January over masks. Lee’s Summit schools dropped its mandate last month and on Feb. 25 the district asked the court to dismiss the case.
But a March 10 deadline passed without a response from Schmitt’s office, an attorney for Lee’s Summit schools said in a filing Monday. The district now wants Jackson County Judge Marco Roldan to issue a judgment in favor of the school district and against Schmitt.
The attorney general’s office on Monday filed its response and asked the court not to hold the missed deadline against it. Jay Atkins, the office’s general counsel, signed an affidavit saying “excusable neglect” caused the office to miss the deadline. “Excusable neglect” is a legal term referring to having a justifiable reason for missing a deadline.
The affidavit provides no explanation of the neglect, something the district seized on in a separate filing Monday.
“The Attorney General has carpet bombed Missouri’s courts and school districts with at least 45 suits challenging the authority of school districts to create a safe environment for their students and staff,” Joseph Hatley, an attorney representing the district, wrote. “His failure to follow the rules governing these cases suggests that he was only interested in the publicity he generated from filing the suits, but that he wasn’t interested in the hard work of actually litigating them.”
In an email to The Star, Schmitt spokesman Chris Nuelle said: “Lee’s Summit took two years to unmask children, and took a month to respond to our lawsuit, and now they’re whining that they couldn’t read our excellent brief over the weekend? It’s ridiculous. We’re going to keep fighting to unmask children across the state.”
The Lee’s Summit lawsuit is just one of several against Kansas City area districts filed by Schmitt this year that remain ongoing. Both Independence and Park Hill filed motions to dismiss the lawsuits against their districts last week.
A spokeswoman with the Lee’s Summit district did not immediately offer comment on the litigation or the estimated legal fees associated with the case.
Earlier this winter, Lee’s Summit took a hard stance defending its mask mandate, arguing that Schmitt had no legal authority to order that districts drop their COVID-19 rules. Hatley wrote a scathing letter to Schmitt after the attorney general threatened legal action against districts with mandates, sending out dozens of cease and desist letters.
Hatley wrote that the threats “not only lack(ed) legal effect — they are simply wrong.”
“The Board (of Education) will continually evaluate its response to the COVID pandemic based on available and reliable data,” Hatley wrote in the letter to Schmitt. “The Board also shares your stated objective of supporting parental involvement in their children’s education — it just recognizes its responsibility to represent a wider range of voices than those you are publicizing.”
Several other Kansas City area districts also argued that Schmitt did not have the authority to force them to drop their COVID mandates because the rules were created by locally elected officials.
Schmitt called school districts’ mitigation measures illegal following a November court ruling that stripped local health authorities of their powers to issue disease-control measures.
As COVID-19 cases declined following record peaks this winter, school districts across the Kansas City metro have eased pandemic rules and dropped their mask mandates.
Last month, Kansas City officials allowed a health order requiring masks in schools, previously approved by the City Council, to expire. Mayor Quinton Lucas cited falling COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
Kansas City Public Schools, which maintained its mask requirement for longer than many surrounding districts, allowed its mandate to end last week.
This story was originally published March 14, 2022 at 3:30 PM.
