Attorney General Merrick Garland deflected to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s authority when questioned about the Justice Department’s opposing stances in different lawsuits regarding the pandemic’s status during a hearing Tuesday.
Garland told the Senate Appropriations Committee that it is not under his jurisdiction to resolve the contradictions in two cases his agency is leading. The DOJ is, on one hand, requesting that a pandemic immigration rule — Title 42, which allows law enforcement to turn away migrants to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — be removed while also appealing a federal judge’s decision to end mask mandates on public transport.
“It’s just, I think, important under from — for me to explain the role of the Justice Department, which is not to make judgments about public health and really not to make judgments about policy in either of the two areas that you’re, that you’re raising, but rather to make determinations of whether the programs and requests of the agencies that are responsible for those are lawful,” Garland told Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine.
Garland said that because the DOJ had determined that both actions were lawful, it would proceed with the requests despite their contradictory natures.
“With respect to the mask mandate on the planes, I think this is quite transparent,” he said. “The CDC announced its assessment that this was a program that continued to be necessary in the confines of airplanes and public transportation. The only question for us is that it is lawful, [and the] solicitor general concluded it was lawful. With respect to Title 42, it’s the same analysis from our side. We defend that program as long as it’s lawful, we don’t make the public health determinations that you’re speaking of.”
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Collins acknowledged that the CDC put the DOJ in an “untenable” position with different messaging on the pandemic on different political issues.
The Biden administration has been selective on the status of the pandemic, getting ready to scrap Title 42 and ending masking on the White House grounds while extending the student loan reprieve and demanding that masks be reinstated on airplanes. Some lawmakers have introduced legislation that would extend Title 42 until after the pandemic is officially declared over. Republicans want it to remain in place due to projections of massive border crossings once one of the only tools available to turn people away is removed.
