Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won't give up on his school mask mandate ban

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is appealing a court order that blocks his ban on school mask mandates.
• The state said it was going to ignore the ban and punish non-complying school districts anyways.
• The appeal "triggers an automatic stay," meaning that DeSantis' ban is temporarily law once more.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is ardently moving forward with his quest to prohibit mask mandates in schools after he appealed a recent court decision striking down his previous ban on the matter.

DeSantis filed a notice to appeal the decision on Thursday, noting that it "triggers an automatic stay pending review," CNN reported. Parents from several Florida counties filed a notice to vacate the stay in the hopes of re-allowing mask mandates in schools.

Last week, Judge John Cooper of Leon County's 2nd Judicial Circuit Court ruled that the governor lacked "the authority for a blanket mandatory ban against face mask" policies.

The state of Florida has seemingly ignored the judge's ruling. Richard Corcoran, the state's education commissioner, said on Monday that he was withholding paychecks from the school board members in two counties ignoring DeSantis' mask mandate ban.

"We're going to fight to protect parents' rights to make health care decisions for their children," Corcoran said. "They know what is best for their children."

Florida still has the nation's largest COVID-19 caseload, averaging nearly 20,000 new cases and 325 deaths every day, according to the New York Times' COVID-19 tracker.

Rep. Kathy Castor, who represents the Tampa area in the US House of Representatives, met with a group of pediatricians and workers from children's hospitals who published a full-page advertisement in The New York Times pleading for people to take coronavirus seriously as child hospitalizations rise.

Hospitals are admitting 68 children per day in Florida, according to CDC data WFLA cited.

"America's children's hospitals are under an unprecedented strain," Castor said, according to WFLA. "Pediatric hospitals are at or near capacity and they expect to see more child patients as schools continue to open across the country."

Castor's prediction was correct: Two school districts in Tennessee announced on Wednesday that they were temporarily shutting down after hundreds of new reports of COVID-19, overloading local hospitals. According to ABC News, close to 340 kids are being hospitalized around the country every day.