May 9, 2022
Grounded Globetrotter Asks Appeals Court to Enjoin CDC’s International Traveler Testing Requirement
Airline Passenger Testing Rule One of Few Biden
Administration Pandemic Measures Still in Place
May 9, 2022
By LUCAS WALL
ATLANTA, Georgia – A travel blogger who was the first person in the country to sue to stop the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s International Traveler Testing Requirement for airline passengers flying from foreign nations into the United States filed an emergency motion asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to immediately halt the mandate so he can take a May 13 flight to see his brother in Germany, a trip that’s been postponed since June 2021 because of the testing rule and the now-vacated Federal Transportation Mask Mandate.
Lucas Wall of Washington, D.C., asks the appellate tribunal for a decision by May 12 on his request for a preliminary injunction against the ITTR pending appeal. A federal district judge in Orlando, Florida, held April 29 that the policy is legal, a decision that conflicts with numerous other court decisions striking down Biden Administration COVID-19 pandemic orders that weren’t authorized by Congress.
“The Public Health Service Act contains no authority for CDC and [the Department of Health & Human Services] to adopt a requirement that any person wishing to fly from a foreign nation to the United States submit a negative virus test taken within one day of departure, regardless of vaccination or natural-immunity status,” Wall wrote. “Certainly for American citizens, the ITTR involves apprehending travelers who can’t present a negative COVID-19 test at check-in. By CDC order, that person is then detained in the foreign country until he/she can submit a negative test taken within one day of departure. The person is only released upon showing airline check-in agents a negative test result.”
Wall filed an appeal last week of District Judge Paul Byron’s decision holding that CDC does have the legal authority to mandate transportation passengers and workers don masks and that anyone flying into the United States present a negative coronavirus test taken no more than one day prior to departure. Byron’s decision greatly conflicts with the one issued April 18 by District Judge Kathryn Mizelle of Tampa, Florida, who vacated the mask mandate worldwide, ruling CDC issued it without congressional authority, did not offer a chance for the public to comment, and did not reasonably explain its decisionmaking.
More than 260 U.S. airlines, airports, hotel chains, car-rental corporations, national travel and tourism associations, and other businesses have been lobbying hard to kill the pre-departure testing rule that serves no purpose except to discourage foreign travel by Americans due to the risk of being stranded abroad if one can’t find a rapid test, gets a false positive, or comes down with COVID-19 while in another country. The coalition sent a letter to the White House on May 5 demanding that “the Administration … expeditiously terminate the inbound testing requirement for vaccinated air travelers,” asserting “While there is no longer a need for an inbound testing requirement for vaccinated travelers, the economic costs associated with maintaining the measure are significant.”
International travel spending is still down a staggering 78% compared to 2019, according to the letter.
A coalition of 309 pilots and flight attendants filed a brief today in support of enjoining the ITTR, as did three dual citizens of the United States plus Israel and Greece.
“The ITTR had been effect for 11 months when the latest version was issued in December 2021,” wrote Wall, who founded last August Americans Against Mask Mandates, a coalition of more than 650 passengers and airline employees opposed to the FTMM, 41 of whom are prosecuting 15 lawsuits in numerous federal courts attacking the mask and testing requirements as well as airlines’ discriminatory policies of refusing mask exemptions to the disabled. “It did not stop new variants from spreading from abroad all over the United States. Continuing the same failed policy is the definition of insanity.”
Wall said Congress has never given one government agency the staggering amount of power to detain American citizens in a foreign nation if they can’t present a negative COVID-19 test taken the day before they try to fly home. He notes the policy is also a miserable failure.
“The latest ITTR version … was put into place to supposedly stop the Omicron variant of COVID-19 from entering the United States,” according to his motion. “Within two weeks of ordering the ITTR’s latest version [in early December 2021], CDC’s own data showed 99% of COVID-19 infections in the United States were of the Omicron variant. The ITTR did not stop it from entering America.”
The 260+ organizations who oppose the ITTR wrote in their May 5 letter: “Many foreign governments with similar infection, vaccination and hospitalization rates – including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada – have eliminated pre-departure testing requirements for vaccinated travelers. Further, since the federal government does not require negative tests for entry at our land-border ports of entry with Canada and Mexico, it no longer makes sense to keep a pre-departure COVID-19 testing requirement in place for vaccinated inbound international air travelers to the U.S.”
Pilots and flight attendants joining the case as friends of the court hail from 35 states and work for 16 commercial airlines.
“Virus testing limits our ability to travel abroad and is massively reducing our companies’ revenue, thereby lowering our salary increases,” they wrote. “Tens of thousands of our colleagues were laid off or placed on long-term unpaid leave due to the economic devastation caused by the ITTR and other government travel restrictions related to COVID-19.”
Uri and Yvonne Marcus, U.S./Israel citizens from California who reside most of the year in Jerusalem, joined Kleanthis Andreadakis of Henrico County, Virginia, who is a dual citizen of the USA and Greece, in arguing the ITTR deprives them of the ability to travel between their countries guaranteed under international law.
“CDC and HHS have not presented any evidence that air travelers pose a greater risk to bringing COVID-19 into the country than land and sea passengers,” they wrote. “The ITTR imposes unnecessary government restrictions on our constitutional right to travel internationally. This is especially a concern because we are dual citizens of the United States and another country. If we are abroad and can’t obtain a rapid COVID-19 test, we are prohibited from flying home to the United States despite holding a U.S. passport.”
Wall, a global nomad who’s been to 134 nations, was the first person in the United States to file legal challenges to the FTMM and ITTR back on June 7, 2021. He has been trying for 11 months to get the testing requirement tossed out.
“There could not be any more expansive a regulatory reach than detaining and quarantining healthy American citizens in foreign nations merely because they can’t find a rapid virus test or obtain a false positive,” according to his motion. CDC and HHS “fail to explain why fully vaccinated/boosted Americans such as myself flying home need a COVID-19 test to enter the country but not those who are unvaccinated and cross the land borders from Mexico and Canada. Nor why the requirement doesn’t apply to travelers arriving by sea when cruiseships have long been a hotbed of coronavirus infections.”
The case is Wall v. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, No. 22-11532 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.
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