The U.S. Department of Education announced on Aug. 30 that it has opened investigations in five Republican-led states that ban mask mandates in schools, saying such policy could be discriminatory against students with disabilities.
In letters sent to chief state school officers of Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) said it’s looking into whether these states discriminate against students with disabilities by denying them safe access to in-person learning.
