Democrat New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is planning to lift school mask mandates for children and staff. Gov. Murphy is scheduled to make the announcement during a Monday pandemic briefing and the mandate is scheduled to end March 7th.

Fox News reports:

“These requirements again give us no joy, but they’re the only responsible course of action at this time,” he said at the time.

Murphy hinted at ending the mask mandate for schools last week, as cases of the coronavirus plummeted after a spike fueled by the omicron variant last year.

“I look to a time in this school year where we are no longer masking in our schools,” Murphy said last Tuesday.

Murphy’s executive orders requiring masks be worn by students and teachers in schools faced a lawsuit last year. A U.S. district judge, however, denied a request for a preliminary injunction to block the state’s mask mandate in December, calling the in-school mask mandate “rational.”

Gov. Murphy seems to be following the lead of other lawmakers across the country. Recently, Illinois announced plans to lift the mandate as well as Virginia.

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