Hi, It’s Danny Karon, your Lovable Lawyer here with your big shoulders shot of legal wellness. Now I say big shoulders because today I’m in Chicago. I’m in Lincoln Park to be specific. We’re going to talk about what the city of Chicago just required. They required mask wearing again.
A lot of folks think in a city like Chicago and elsewhere that it’s the mayor’s job to require mask mandates. That’s not so, at least here. The Chicago Municipal Code says it’s the Chicago Commission of Health’s job to decide whether masks are essential for sake of the public safety. That’s what the Commissioner ordered just recently.
Chicago’s mask mandate says a couple of things. One is that anybody two years old and older regardless of vaccination status has to wear a mask inside public places. It also says as it concerns private residences, like condos and apartments, and there’s so many of them around here, you have to wear masks there, too. It covers everything.
People wonder if the Commissioner can do this constitutionally. That takes us a layer deeper back to that Jacobson vs. Massachusetts case that we’ve talked about before with the U.S. Supreme Court in 1905. Compulsory vaccinations for sake of the public welfare and safety are constitutional now. If vaccinations are constitutional, easily by extension, mask wearing is too. That’s your constitutional basis for why it’s okay in Chicago for the Commissioner of Health to order a mask mandate.
Hopefully we’ll all wear our masks and we’ll do our part so we can get through this and get back to normal living as soon as possible. In the meantime, mask up. That is today’s big shoulders masking and vaccination shot of legal wellness for you. If you want to learn more, please subscribe to my website, my YouTube page, on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I will keep doing my part by making videos to keep you safe and well out there.
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