YOUNGSTOWN — A judge is expected to rule in a week or so on whether to grant a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit filed by Boardman schools parents trying to overturn the district’s requirement that students wear face masks.

The school district has said the masks protect children from COVID-19 and enable students to remain in school. The parents in the lawsuit argued in a filing this week that it is time to ask whether the benefits of masks are outweighed by the downsides.

Judge Anthony Donofrio of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court met in chambers Wednesday with an attorney for the school district and one from the parents. He then scheduled a second hearing for 1:30 p.m. Jan. 27.

Ten parents, referring to themselves as the Boardman Ohio Parents Organization, filed suit individually and on behalf of their children Tuesday seeking a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction to reverse the district’s mask mandate.

Maria Limbert Markis, attorney for Boardman schools, read a statement after she emerged from the hearing, saying, “Boardman’s face mask policy is fully complying with the Ohio Department of Education, state and federal health agencies. Other courts in Ohio have specifically found school face masks reasonable and constitutional. We think the TRO should be denied.”

HARMFUL?

But the temporary restraining order filing by the parents states that mask wearing in children could be doing more harm than good.

It cites a study on mask use in 24,930 school children that found 68 percent “complained about impairments caused by wearing mask,” including “irritability (60 percent); headache (53 percent); difficulty concentrating (50 percent); less happiness (49 percent); reluctance to go to school / kindergarten (44 percent); malaise (42 percent); impaired learning (38 percent); and drowsiness / fatigue (37 percent).

“Additionally, mask use by children is detrimental to their communication skills at a critical stage of their development,” the filing states.

COMMUNICATION

The World Health Organization “notes that masking children raises social and communications concerns,” the suit states. Specifically, researchers are concerned that masks may “hinder verbal and nonverbal communication,” the filing states.

The filing went on to cite a study indicating that “children correctly identified the emotional expression on uncovered faces about 66 percent of the time, but when they looked at faces in surgical masks, they were “only able to correctly identify sadness about 28 percent of the time, anger 27 percent of the time, and fear 18 percent of the time.”

It added that “Covering a child’s face mutes these nonverbal forms of communication and can result in robotic and emotionless interactions, anxiety and depression. Seeing people speak is a building block of phonetic development. It is especially important for children with disabilities, such as hearing impairment,” the filing states, quoting from an Aug. 8 opinion piece by Marty Makary and H. Cody Meissner in the The Wall Street Journal.

The filing states that “while masks are proven to harm children, COVID-19 itself presents very little risk of harm to children.”

COVID-19 infection in children is “generally characterized by mild illness,” the filing says, citing an article by Zoe Hyde in the Medical Journal of Australia in August 2020 as the source.

The filing states that in mid-March 2020, “few could argue against erring on the side of caution. But over 18 months later, we owe it to our children and their parents to answer the question properly: Do the benefits of masking kids in school really outweigh the downsides? For the reasons stated herein, (the parents filing the suit) contends they do not.”