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After hearing 14 witnesses, including a teacher afraid he would carry COVID-19 back to his elderly mother-in-law, a judge has issued an injunction giving the decision to open classrooms to local school boards without the fear of lost funding.

After two days of testimony, lawyers for the teachers union asked for a surgical decision: keep school funding in place, but allow districts to choose when and how to open.

“In this case that would mean a safety requirement, which is not in the order,” said Florida Education Association attorney Kendall Coffey.

In the ruling, the judge struck portions of the reopening order he deemed unconstitutional.

“The judge didn’t order all schools have to be closed. What he said was those parts of the Commissioner’s order that conditioned funding upon arbitrarily opening brick and mortar schools before the end of August is unconstitutional,” said FEA attorney Ron Meyer.

Our analysis of data from the 30, mostly smaller districts, that opened since Augusts 10th, showed a 10 percent increase in cases in kids 17 and under.

The data compares cases on August 11th and August 23rd.

In the end, the judge agreed that Hillsborough County became the poster child in this case.

The union described the state’s treatment of the county as ‘bullying’.

“The county did everything that it had in its power. It assembled a panel of doctors who unanimously, except fo the Department of Health doctor who said that he couldn’t weigh in, said that schools aren’t safe to be open right now,” said Meyer.

An appeal is likely and several days of legal wrangling will take place before districts get certainty.

The state’s contract with the outside attorneys it hired is paying each of them $450 an hour, up to a total of $550,000.

The union’s legal costs are also substantial, but unknown.

An appeal by the state will result in an automatic stay of the judge’s order.

The union expects the judge to reinstate the order because he determined the union’s case had a substantial chance of prevailing.