(CNN)A federal judge in Florida struck down on Monday the Biden administration's mask mandate for airplanes and other public transport methods.
US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle said the mandate was unlawful because it exceeded the statutory authority of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and because its implementation violated administrative law.
It is unclear clear how quickly the ruling will be implemented at airports or train stations across the country or if the Justice Department will attempt to block the ruling and file an appeal.
Just last week, the CDC extended this mask mandate through May 3. The masking requirement applied to airplanes, trains, and other forms of public transportation.
A Biden administration official familiar with the White House's decision previously told CNN the goal of the extension was to gather more information and understanding of the BA.2 variant of the coronavirus. Covid-19 cases in the US are on the rise, leading universities and the City of Philadelphia to reimplement indoor mask mandates.
US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said last week that part of the reason for the extension of the transportation mask mandate was because of rising Covid-19 cases and settings created by travel.
"We bring a lot of people together in a closed setting for a prolonged period of time, and not everyone has the option to not travel," Murthy said on SiriusXM's Doctor Radio's Doctor Radio Reports, giving examples such as traveling on a plane to see a sick mother or traveling for work to keep a job. "Because it's not necessarily an optional setting for people and because, again, folks are together for a long period of time, that's why the CDC has leaned into being cautious there and recommending that people continue to wear those masks."
The White House, the Department of Homeland Security and CDC did not immediately comment on the ruling.
In her 59-page ruling, Mizelle suggested that the government's implementation of the mandate -- in which non-complying travelers are "forcibly removed from their airplane seats, denied board at the bus steps, and turned away at the train station doors" -- was akin to "detention and quarantine," which are not contemplated in the section of the law in question, she said.
"As a result, the Mask Mandate is best understood not as sanitation, but as an exercise of the CDC's power to conditionally release individuals to travel despite concerns that they may spread a communicable disease (and to detain or partially quarantine those who refuse)," she wrote. "But the power to conditionally release and detain is ordinarily limited to individuals entering the United States from a foreign country."
She added that the mandate also did not fit with a section of the law that would allow for detention of a travel if he was, upon examination, found to infected.
"The Mask Mandate complies with neither of these subsections," the judge said. "It applies to all travelers regardless of their origins or destinations and makes no attempt to sort based on their health."
Mizelle was appointed to the federal court in 2020 by then-President Donald Trump.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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CDC mask mandate for travelers struck down by federal judge - CNN
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