The Supreme Court of Virginia has thrown out a lawsuit filed by a group of Chesapeake parents against Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The parents have students in Chesapeake schools and filed the lawsuit in January. They sought to have the court throw out Youngkin’s Executive Order 2, which made mask-wearing at public schools optional.
The lawsuit alleged Youngkin was overstepping his bounds as a governor to give that order.
A clerk of the Virginia Supreme Court wrote the opinion dismissing this case, essentially saying the lawsuit asked for solutions the justices can’t provide.
The opinion said the proposed solution of “prohibition” was used in the wrong context. That is usually an action that one high court takes against a lower court, so it wouldn’t apply to the governor or the school board.
The group of parents also asked for a writ of mandamus. That kind of order goes from a court to a public official, requiring the official to comply with “a clear and unequivocal duty.”
The clerk wrote that apart from Youngkin himself, the other subjects of this case wouldn’t be “public officials” that qualify for that order; and Youngkin couldn’t be ordered by writ of mandamus because executing laws requires discretion.
In short, the case was thrown out because the parents asked for the wrong types of remedies.
A footnote to the opinion noted that “by this dismissal, we offer no opinion on the legality of EO 2 or any other issue pertaining to petitioners’ claims.”