Although Sharon McKeeman’s son had a medical exemption from wearing a mask at school last year during the pandemic, he was bullied and singled out because he was maskless.
“By having a bare-faced smile, he's actually in the minority on campus,” McKeeman told the Southern California Record. “As a mom, I am seeing my kids suffer knowing they have a right to breathe freely and smile.”
McKeeman has since founded the Let Them Breathe advocacy group to promote mask choice and to end mask mandates for youth and everyone.
“I looked very in-depth into the data and we have a legal team that has compiled all of this and masks simply aren't effective,” she said in an interview. “I'm actually surprised that we're still having this conversation in the country because it's been proven that the efficacy is so low. At this point, it does seem that masking has more to do with political theater than it actually does helping our kids in any way or even helping the rest of society.”
A San Diego resident, McKeeman represents 50,000 parents and has filed a lawsuit in San Diego Superior Court against the state of California alleging nine causes of action, including a violation of the Emergency Services Act by defendant Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“My stance on it is that the governor is continuing to overreach,” she said. “Our current lawsuit is alleging and asserting that the state and the governor are overreaching. The emergency order is addressed in our lawsuit as well, and has gone on too long.”
The complaint also alleges that children are being harmed by the state’s mask mandate.
On July 12, the California Department of Public Health issued updated statewide guidance for K–12 students, requiring them to mask indoors.
“Children are at risk of harm from continued mask mandates,” wrote attorney Lee M. Andelin in the 48-page complaint. “It is a generally acknowledged principle of medicine that every treatment which has an effect also has a side effect, and masks are no different.”
The plaintiffs however experienced a setback on Sept. 30 when a hearing on a preliminary injunction that would have lifted the mask mandate was postponed.
“The state actually played some delay tactics,” McKeeman said. “They filed 1,600 pages the night before the hearing, giving the judge no time to review them. So, it wasn't possible to have the hearing on the 30th. The state asked the judge to delay the case until March of next year and they were asking the state to completely dismiss the case.”
Instead, the judge rescheduled a full hearing on the preliminary injunction for Nov. 8.
“We are very thankful that we're going to have a full hearing on November 8, even though it is a delay of a few weeks,” McKeeman added. “It's better than having to wait until the March date that the state was trying to put this off until.”