Father who sent a teacher to the ER over mask mandate banned from campus

A father who attacked a teacher last week in a dispute over a mask requirement, sending him to the emergency room, has been banned from the premises of Sutter Creek Elementary School in rural Amador County Unified School District. The Sutter Creek Police Department is investigating the incident but has not filed charges to date.

The confrontation on Aug. 12 occurred when the unidentified father argued with the school principal about the state mandate that his daughter wear a mask. When he returned that day to speak with the principal again, a male teacher intervened, leading to a physical confrontation that sent the teacher to the hospital. “The teacher was bleeding,” Superintendent Torie Gibson told KCRA 3. “He had some lacerations on his face, some bruising on his face, and a pretty good knot on the back of his head.”

Mirroring the California Department of Public Health  policy, the Amador County Public Schools Board of Trustees voted to mandate masks for all students with exceptions only for those with medical reasons.

Aaron Tang, a professor of law at the UC Davis, told the Washington Post that parents like those in Amador Unified who argue that masking requirements infringe on liberty and interfere with a quality education would likely lose a lawsuit if they filed one based on the state Constitution and verdicts in recent recent high-profile cases, Tang said.