New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, lifted the statewide mask mandate for indoor public spaces on Thursday, joining a trend of blue-state governors pulling back pandemic restrictions.
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State health officials had initially planned to keep the mandate, which applies to schools and all indoor public spaces, through March 4. Businesses and places of worship are authorized to set stricter masking rules if they want.
“Those are personal decisions that families will make,” Grisham said regarding masks in schools.
The mask mandate, lifted for vaccinated people last July, was swiftly reimposed the following month amid an increase in new COVID-19 cases caused by the highly transmissible delta variant.
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Grisham’s unexpected move to lift the mask mandate weeks ahead of schedule comes on the tail end of the wave of blue-state governors doing so. Republican governors, such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Texas’s Greg Abbott, have spurned such measures since early in the pandemic, arguing they were not justified and were harmful even before the omicron variant hit.
