Mayors Defiant After Kemp's Order Overriding Local Mask Mandates

Caption

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms delivers remarks.

Credit: Screenshot/City of Atlanta.

Several mayors across the state are standing by their orders requiring residents to wear masks after Gov. Brian Kemp extended coronavirus restrictions Wednesday that explicitly disallow those mandates, even as coronavirus cases continue to explode.

Kemp's order strongly encourages Georgians to have their faces covered while in public, but leaders in Atlanta, Savannah, Athens, Dunwoody, Augusta and more enacted measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 as Georgia's hospital capacity grows and new cases rise at an unprecedented pace.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 herself last week, said in a briefing Thursday that she believed the city still had standing to mandate masks, especially in city-owned buildings like the Atlanta airport. Bottoms noted the timing of Kemp's order comes well after other cities passed mask orders and comes on the heels of President Donald Trump's visit to Atlanta Wednesday where he did not wear a mask. 

"Whatever the motivation is, I think that at the end of the day we all have to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do," Bottoms said. "And what the scientists are telling us is that the right thing to do is to wear a mask, what health care professionals are telling us is that they are being overrun in our hospitals, and that they are asking us to help slow the spread and be considerate."

Bottoms said she is not worried about potential legal action from the state and that an "alarming rise" in cases and hospitalizations led to the mask order.

"It is not just my posture, but the posture of many other mayors across the state, that our policies are enforceable, and they stand," she said.

Dunwoody Mayor Lynn Deutsch wrote on Twitter that she was "incredibly sad for my community and for Georgia" after learning of Kemp's order.

"You know who is caught in the battle between the Georgia Governor and Local governments? Grocery store clerks, retail workers and restaurant servers," she wrote. "No local ordinance was passed casually and without serious deliberation."

In a Thursday news conference, Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said the governor overstepped his authority and the city's mask ordinance, the first in Georgia, still stands.

Johnson rattled off several new developments across the country he said supported his decision, including the Republican governor of Alabama enacting a mask order and a message from the director of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that said mandatory mask orders could curb much of the virus' spread in four to six weeks.

"Just yesterday, Walmart, the United States' largest retailer, announced that shoppers will be required to wear a mask in all of its stores, regardless of state laws," he said. "And since then, Sam's Club, Costco, Apple stores, Dollar Tree, Best Buy, Starbucks, Kroger, CVS and Target are all requiring masks in their stores as well. The science is clear."

Johnson echoed other Democratic elected officials across the state that have pushed mask orders in blaming the state's lack of an order as part of the continued spread of COVID-19. In Chatham County alone, cases rose from about 2,100 last Thursday to nearly 3,000 Thursday.

"How can we take care of our local needs when our state ties our hands behind our back and then says 'Ignore the advice of experts' and sometimes to ignore their own advice?," he asked. "It makes no sense and it is not based on the scientific data."

The governor's office continues to urge Georgians to wear a mask in public, and Kemp is set to deliver another COVID-19 update Friday morning.