A Facebook friend shared a post about the authority of the PA Secretary of Health to institute a mask mandate as allowed under Pennsylvania's Disease Prevention and Control Act. For convenience and searchability, I will provide the text and well as a screenshot below.
The original tweet from Rep. Seth Grove's twitter account, dated 31 Aug 2021 2:59 pm, says:
Ok people. Here is THE question.
What actual police powers does the Sec of Health have to compel her “universal mask mandate” under the Disease Prevention and Control Act?
(1) that act is not applicable to healthy people.
(2) see point 1.
Problem solved.
The Facebook post by PA State Representative David Rowe [Facebook] [website] references the above tweet (via screenshot) and says this (dated 31 Aug 2021 4:49 pm):
My good friend and Chairman of the House State Government Committee makes the same great point I did when I asked the Departments of Health and Education how they plan to enforce this new mandate. They have not responded. Your local school boards still wield the power. We are a Commonwealth, not a monarchy. Local governments should be handling local issues.
Being the curious sort who can smell a fish and who thinks the posts were a bit flippant and dismissive coming from representatives (particularly the Grove tweet), I decided to look at what the act actually says. This is my analysis.
As far as I can tell from my reading of the PA Disease Prevention and Control Law of 1955 (PA Section 521) [text of the act], the applicability of this law is quite broad. Let's break it down.
In Section 521.3, local boards and departments of health are given primary responsibility for disease control in their jurisdictions (521.3(a)), while the state has responsibility in non-governed jurisdictions and explicitly in public and private schools (521.3(b)). However, we see in 521.3(c) that the secretary may override local efforts if he finds the controls inadequate. The finding of inadequacy is left entirely to the secretary ("If the secretary finds....). Note that it also requires the local board to pay the state for these mandated measures. Thus, we have established the authority of the secretary of health in PA.
Note also in section 521.3 and other sections that the language used if about "prevention and control of communicable and non-communicable disease" or some variation often. There is no indication here that the prevention and control is limited to the person carrying the disease. In fact, we see this wording a bit more specifically in 521.5 ("Control measures"), which states:
Upon the receipt by a local board or department of health or by the department, as the case may be, of a report of a disease which is subject to isolation, quarantine, or any other control measure, the local board or department of health or the department shall carry out the appropriate control measures in such manner and in such place as is provided by rule or regulation.
As we see, the trigger is the "report of a disease", not the report of a person with a disease. That is, the measures are not limited to the carrier of the disease, but rather they apply to anyone in order to control the disease.
And what controls are allowed? Also in 521.5, we see the authorities shall apply "appropriate control measures." Also, these are measures provided by "rule or regulation." Note that rules or regulations are not laws, and thus are the part of law that are left to be established by other government entities (departments or agencies). This is relationship between enacted law and rules/regulations that you find in building codes, traffic laws, and the like, which are also fully enforceable in courts by fines or jail time.
Section 521.7 allows for other restrictions on the carrier of a disease, such as forced isolation, quarantine, or treatment. I won't explore this because it is only discussing additional legal restrictions on a carrier, which is not the scope of the original post. However, it is useful to know there can be additional restrictions on the carrier of a disease.
Section 521.16 ("Rules and regulations") provides the scope of the rules and regulations that may be issued by the Board.
- Note in (a)(3) that the board determines "the communicable diseases which are to be subject to isolation, quarantine, or other control measures", so they decide the "what".
- Also, (a)(5) specifies the board to decide the enforcement of the rules and regulations.
- Immunization and vaccination requirements are also allowed in (a)(6).
- School jurisdiction is specifically called out in (a)(7).
- And the real power lies in (a)(12), which it establishes that the rules and regulations can apply to "any other matters it may deem advisable for the prevention and control
of disease and for carrying out the provisions and purposes of this act." This gives very broad authority to stop spread of disease.
- Also of note is 521.16(c), which prevents local measures from enacting less strict measures than the state in order to reduce their impact.
From the enforcement side, please see 521.20 ("Penalties, prosecutions and disposition of fines"), which clearly provides fines and jail time for violations.
Based on the above, what have we established from Pennsylvania's Disease Prevention and Control Act?
- The law applies to both healthy and unhealthy people.
- It allows the state to override local authority.
- It allows to enforcement via fines and jail.
- It allows for any control measures.
- It allows requirements for vaccines.
If I could google this act and find the relevant passages in 5 minutes, how can elected Pennsylvania representatives not to the same and avoid posted whatever made-up garbage they want to justify their own positions regardless of the facts stated in the law?
These people are supposed to be responsible for passing and understanding laws, but they (or even their staff) can't seem to take the time to actually read what is there. How can they ever be trusted to make good new laws if they can't be responsible enough to know what the existing laws are.
You may say that no one, even lawmakers, can know all the laws and remember them. I agree. But they went out of their way to make posts about the law. This was not some random Jeopardy! question that put them on the spot. At best, they claimed to know what they were talking about but didn't take the time to see if their claim was even true. At worst, they flat out lied to deceive anyone who wouldn't check if they were telling the truth. Either way, they are not living up to their responsibilities as representatives.
This is not acceptable.
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