Biden's Education Dept. just launched a civil rights investigation into 5 Republican states banning masks in school

• The US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights is probing five states over mask bans.
• It's investigating bans in Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah, all governed by Republicans.
• The question is, are they keeping high-risk students from "safely accessing in-person education."

The US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights is investigating whether indoor mask bans in five states prevent students with disabilities who are at a heightened risk for COVID-19 from "safely accessing in-person education."

The office sent letters to state education leaders in Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah to inform them their state mask bans were being investigated.

"National data also show that children with some underlying medical conditions, including those with certain disabilities, are at higher risk than other children for experiencing severe illness from COVID-19," Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Suzanne Goldberg wrote to each of the five states. "At the same time, extensive evidence supports the universal use of masks over the nose and mouth to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission."

The US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement that his department had heard from concerned parents who feared their students with disabilities or underlying health conditions weren't receiving equal access to learning.

"It's simply unacceptable that state leaders are putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve," he said in the statement. "The Department will fight to protect every student's right to access in-person learning safely and the rights of local educators to put in place policies that allow all students to return to the classroom full-time in-person safely this fall."

-U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov) August 30, 2021

The civil rights office said it was not launching investigations into Florida, Texas, Arkansas or Arizona - which all have attempted to implement mask bans - because those bans are not being enforced due to court orders "or other state actions."

Last week, President Joe Biden asked Cardona to look into legal action that can be taken against schools banning the use of masks as the Delta variant surges. If the investigations find that state mask bans have discriminated against students with disabilities, those states could lose federal education funding.

Throughout the pandemic, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken extreme positions against some public-health measures ahead of school reopenings, such as signing an order that would strip funding from schools that required mask-wearing and another that banned vaccine passports in the state.

Insider reported last week that a judge struck down DeSantis's mask mandates ban, saying the ban was unconstitutional and DeSantis did so "without legal authority," which is why Florida will not be included in the investigations.

Failure to wear a mask has put those who are immunocompromised at greater risk during the pandemic. An 88-year-old professor recently resigned in the middle of a lecture because a student of his refused to wear a mask properly, even after explaining that he had type 2 diabetes, which put him at higher risk for COVID-19.