Manatee County faces lawsuit from Palmetto pastor, Florida lawmaker over mask mandate
A Palmetto pastor and a state politician have sued Manatee County government over its mandatory mask mandate. And more than 100 people turned out Monday to support the anti-mask cause.
The Rev. Joel Tillis and state Rep. Anthony Sabatini announced the lawsuit Monday morning outside the Manatee County Courthouse. Sabatini has filed 14 similar lawsuits against mask mandates throughout the state.
The resolution, which county commissioners passed last week in a 4-3 vote, is “a radical infringement of the reasonable and legitimate expectation of privacy and facial autonomy in addition to the medical privacy by forcing them to wear masks for the majority of the day,” according to the lawsuit filed with the Clerk of the Circuit Court Monday morning.
The county mandate requires masks in businesses when social distancing isn’t possible.
“About a week ago Manatee County decided in a very silly way to make a unilateral decision to do not what the federal government has done, not what the state governor has done, not what most people in most jurisdictions have done, but they decided to create an illegal, unconstitutional mask mandate here in a county of 400,000 people, threatening to assign fines of up to $250 for every single person caught not wearing a mask,” Sabatini said at Monday’s rally.
“It’s a county commission of Republicans. It’s about time they start acting like it,” said Sabatini, a Republican from Howey-in-the-Hills.
Sabatini was joined by Tillis, a conservative pastor at Suncoast Baptist Church, 1816 10th St. W., Palmetto. He said the mask requirement should not apply within churches, synagogues and other houses of worship because it interferes with the ability to pray.
“This is not an issue of right or left, Republican or Democrat. This is not even an issue of Trump or Biden. This is an issue of right and wrong,” Tillis told the crowd. “The resolution is wrong legally. The resolution is wrong biblically. The resolution is wrong medically. The resolution is wrong, and we do not accept it under any circumstances.”
Sabatini is representing Tillis pro bono in his lawsuit against the county.
In a statement to the Bradenton Herald, County Attorney Mitchell Palmer said his office is prepared to defend the county’s resolution, which is based on Leon County’s version of a mask mandate — one of the orders that has been upheld in court.
“The County Attorney’s Office does not typically comment on threatened or pending litigation. Rest assured, however, that the County Attorney’s Office aggressively defends lawsuits brought against the county, regardless of subject matter,” Palmer said.
Sabatini, who represented the plaintiff in the Leon County case, acknowledged that he would keep filing lawsuits until Florida’s Supreme Court issues its own ruling.
As of Monday morning, Manatee County had confirmed more than 8,700 cases of the novel coronavirus since the pandemic spread to Florida in March. In Manatee, 187 residents have died, while the statewide death toll stands at 7,157.
Wearing a mask in public is the official recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees and the Florida Department of Health in Manatee County.
In their decision to approve the mandate, commissioners said they believed the resolution would help educate more residents about the importance of wearing a face covering to prevent the spread of COVID-19. They also believed having an official resolution in place would help business owners enforce the rule.
But according to Sabatini, a resolution doesn’t have the legal standing required for enforcement.
“You don’t have to be a lawyer to know that resolutions are not the force of law,” said Sabatini, who also took issue with law enforcement officers being required to interpret the “vague” resolution to determine whether a person has a medical condition that exempts them from the mask mandate.
Pro-mask advocates have argued that a temporary mask order doesn’t violate the U.S. Constitution any more than the legal requirement to wear a seat belt or wear clothes in public. In an interview with the Bradenton Herald, Sabatini said the county’s role in public health shouldn’t be “shoved down everyone’s throats.”
“There is a government compelling interest to get involved and make sure there are certain mechanisms enacted. That’s very different from masks where people are asked to wear them all day, every day,” Sabatini responded. “This is far more invasive than a thin piece of cloth over your chest for 30 minutes on your way to work and 30 minutes on your way home.”
Protestors said they support an individual’s decision to wear a mask or not, but decided to speak out once Manatee County government made it mandatory.
“People need to be allowed to choose,” said Katia Gundersen, a St. Pete Beach resident who decided to protest wherever her voice could make a difference.
“Government’s gotten way out of hand,” said Rick, a Bradenton man who declined to give his last name. “God created us to be the most intelligent beings on the earth. I think we can pretty much figure it out without being stiff-armed by the government.”
According to a 12-page legal complaint filed as part of the lawsuit, Tillis and Sabatini are asking a judge to find that the resolution violates the Florida Constitution and to prevent its enforcement.
“We’re asking them to reconsider this,” Sabatini said, “and get rid of this mask mandate.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 2:14 PM.
