The Rhode Island Department of Health risked contempt of court for allegedly violating a legal settlement with parents who challenged its COVID-19 school mask mandate, by saying it wouldn’t require scientific evidence before reimposing a mandate.
Now RIDOH has a mixed message for those parents and Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Lanphear: Sorry, not sorry.
The agency sent the “wrong draft” of its proposed regulation to the Office of Regulatory Reform as the result of an “inadvertent mix-up,” RIDOH lawyer Justin Sullivan told plaintiffs’ lawyer Gregory Piccirilli in an email Wednesday.