Arkansas' Republican Governor Regrets Banning Mask Mandates: 'Everything Has Changed Now'
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Governor Asa Hutchinson/Youtube Governor Asa Hutchinson
Months after he signed a bill banning state and local officials in Arkansas from mandating face masks, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he wants to see the law reversed.
"In hindsight, I wish that it had not become law. But it is the law, and the only chance we have is either to amend it or for the courts to say that it has an unconstitutional foundation," Hutchinson, 70, said in a Tuesday news conference, which streamed on YouTube.
Hutchinson's shift comes as states including Arkansas witness a spike in COVID-19 cases brought on by the highly contagious Delta variant.
The ban on mask mandates in Arkansas currently applies to state and local officials, but Hutchinson has now asked state lawmakers to amend the ban, to allow school districts to mandate masks if they so choose.
"There is an urgent need to enact exceptions to Act 1002 of 2021 so that public school boards have the flexibility necessary to utilize masks to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 in schools," Hutchinson wrote in a proclamation issued this week.
A CDC study found that mandating masks "was associated with a decrease in daily COVID-19 case and death growth rates within 20 days of implementation."
While Hutchinson appeared to acknowledge that mask mandates are needed to slow the spread of the virus in areas with low vaccination rates, other Republican governments are not backing down from signing similar laws banning the mandates.
In Florida — one of the seven states currently accounting for half of all new COVID cases and hospitalizations — Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an order barring cities and schools from implementing mask requirements. Some Florida counties and school districts are defying the governor, however, by seeking mandatory mask rules in spite of his order.
Speaking to CNN last week, Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said DeSantis "has made it as difficult as possible to make people safe."
"We're not allowed to have mask mandates right now," Gelber, 60, told CNN's Ryan Nobles in an interview over the weekend. "We were one of the first cities to require it and we charged a fine just to get people to do it and the governor stopped allowing us to do it and then immediately we saw a surge across our county and state when he did that."
Nearly every county in Florida is currently considered by the CDC to have a "high" level of community transmission of COVID-19.
