Background: Laramie High School (Google Maps). Inset: Grace Smith during her 2021 arrest (Andy Smith/YouTube).
A judge ruled that a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Wyoming woman who refused to comply with her former high school’s mask mandate in 2021 can proceed.
Grace Smith was a 16-year-old junior at Laramie High School when she got into trouble for trespassing. She was unhappy with the school’s rule about wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Smith didn’t want to attend virtual classes and chose to go to school without a mask, which was mandatory for in-person learning. As a result, she faced suspension three times for not following the mandate.
Despite the warnings, Smith persisted in attending school without a mask. This led to her arrest for trespassing. Her father, Andy Smith, was present during her arrest and recorded the incident, sharing it online.
Grace Smith later withdrew from the school.
Smith’s parents took legal action against Laramie High School, claiming that their daughter’s First Amendment rights were infringed. They also alleged that the school had retaliated against her for refusing to comply with the mask mandate.
As the case made its way through the courts, it was eventually dismissed by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Freudenthal, a Barack Obama appointee, in 2023. She ruled at the time that Smith did not have standing because she could not prove that the harm done to her was not “self-inflicted.”
Smith’s parents appealed — successfully.
“We are not persuaded,” a three-judge panel for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in an order issued Tuesday.
The judges — Obama appointee Harris Hartz, George W. Bush appointee Gregory Phillips, and Donald Trump appointee Allison Eid — found that Smith did have standing.
“[W]hen a government regulation ‘require[s] or forbid[s] some action by the plaintiff,’ she ‘almost invariably’ states an injury in fact,” the judges wrote. “She alleges that the defendants repeatedly punished her for opposing the mask mandate. They suspended her three times and requested that local law enforcement issue her two trespassing citations, arrest her, and take her to jail. These allegations state an injury in fact.”
These actions by the school against Smith showed that the former student “easily met the requirements for standing,” the judges found. They further found the school’s counterarguments “unpersuasive.”
Noting that they were not asked to address the merits of the case, the judges wrote that the school’s position “put the ‘merits cart before the standing horse.””
“[A]s explained above, [the merits are] not relevant to her standing to bring the claims,” the judges wrote. “And to the extent that the defendants are saying that the mandate, even if unconstitutional, did not cause her injuries because she could have avoided the injuries by obeying the mandate, they miss the mark.”
In short, the judges concluded, “Grace’s injuries were ‘directly inflicted’ by the defendants’ enforcement of the mask mandate.”
