Another COVID Case, Another Warning: California Courts Are Backing Power Over Law

 California courts are still refusing to reckon with the excesses of the COVID era. A newly decided appellate case involving school masking is the latest red flag: when government overreaches during a declared emergency, Californians should not expect the judiciary to step in and enforce procedural limits. 

Palicke v. Placentia Yorba Linda Unified School District is not really about masks. It is about whether legal guardrails still exist when officials invoke “public health.” The answer emerging from California courts is increasingly clear — and increasingly troubling. 

One Official, No Vote, No Process 

In January 2022, at the height of California’s school masking battles, the president of a local school board announced that certain masks would no longer be permitted on campus. The decision was not agendized. No vote was taken. Other board members who opposed the move were blocked from bringing the issue forward. Yet the announcement immediately became district policy. 

That alone should have triggered alarm. California’s Brown Act requires public bodies to act through lawful procedure: posted agendas, open meetings, and formal votes. No single board member — not even a board president — may legislate policy by personal announcement. A school board is a governing body, not a one-person executive. 

 The policy was enforced against a student, Aidan Palicke, who was removed from in-person education and forced into independent study. His family sued, alleging violations of open-meeting law, the Education Code, and constitutional protections—along with claims of selective enforcement and negligence in how the policy was imposed and applied. 

Whether one supports masking or opposes it is beside the point. The lawsuit raised a basic structural question: can emergency conditions erase procedural law? 

The appellate court never squarely answered that question. Instead, it avoided it. 

Dismiss First, Ask Questions Never 

The court disposed of the case using a familiar COVID-era formula: mootness, immunity, and summary judgment. 

First, the court declared most of the claims moot because the masking mandate eventually ended. In plain English, the judges said it was too late to decide whether the district acted lawfully. The policy expired, so the controversy vanished — no matter the harms already caused.  

This is a pattern across pandemic litigation. Government imposes sweeping rules, harms occur, families challenge them, and by the time a case reaches the appellate level the mandate has been lifted. Courts then say there is nothing left to decide. 

 But mootness doctrine has two well-established exceptions designed for exactly this situation. One applies when government actions are too short-lived to be fully litigated before they end. The plaintiffs argued pandemic masking rules fit that pattern. The court rejected the exception by calling COVID a unique, nonrecurring event and treating the dispute as unlikely to arise again. 

The second exception allows courts to decide technically moot cases that involve extraordinary public importance. The legality of emergency COVID governance easily qualifies. Businesses were closed, schools were shut down, and daily life was regulated by executive order for years. Whether procedural guardrails survive declared emergencies is a foundational civic question. 

Yet the opinion does not meaningfully engage the public-interest exception at all. The expiration of the mandate is treated as the end of the matter. 

That is not judicial neutrality. It is judicial avoidance.                      

Immunity Without Authority 

After dismissing most claims as moot, the court turned to immunity for the rest. Government immunity exists so officials can perform lawful duties without fear of personal ruin. But immunity assumes lawful authority. It is meant to protect execution of power, not create it. 

The central argument in Palicke was that a single board member lacked authority to impose district-wide policy unilaterally. Under California governance law, that decision required agenda, debate, and vote. If the policy was not lawfully enacted, immunity should not shield it simply because it was labeled a public health measure. 

The court sidestepped that threshold question by treating the announcement as a clarification of existing mandates. Once framed as routine enforcement of pandemic guidance — despite record evidence contesting that characterization — immunity followed automatically. The authority dispute — who had the legal power to act — disappeared behind the public health label. 

That move sends a dangerous message. If public health framing can neutralize procedural violations after the fact, officials have every incentive to stretch authority first and invoke immunity later. 

No Jury, No Factfinding 

The final step in the court’s reasoning was to conclude that no material factual disputes remained and that the case could be resolved as a matter of law. Summary judgment is supposed to resolve cases only when no real factual dispute exists. Courts are required to view contested evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party — here, the plaintiffs. If reasonable people could disagree about what happened or whether conduct was justified, the case goes to a jury. 

Here, the plaintiffs identified multiple disputes that went to the heart of the case. Their core theory was that the board president lacked authority to act unilaterally and that other board members objected, sought to place the issue on the agenda, and were blocked. Those allegations were supported by deposition testimony and bore directly on whether immunity could apply. Whether the board president acted within her authority therefore depended not only on legal interpretation but on contested facts about what actually occurred inside the board. Disputes of that kind ordinarily belong to a jury. 

The opinion resolves that conflict by reframing the episode as an announcement of an existing policy rather than the creation of a new one, concluding that no additional authority was required. The plaintiffs also presented disputed evidence on negligence and supervision. Yet the court recounts the events without engaging most of that contested record. By narrowing the factual narrative, the authority and negligence questions appear settled rather than disputed — which in turn allows the court to conclude that no material facts remain for a jury. 

The result is that a case centered on whether a lone board member could effect district policy and how a student was treated never reached the factfinder designed to evaluate contested evidence. Judges replaced jurors. Closure replaced accountability. 

That is not a recipe for constitutional oversight. It is a recipe for institutional self-protection. 

An Unpublished Warning 

The opinion is designated unpublished, meaning it is not binding precedent in California. But unpublished decisions still matter. They reveal how courts are likely to treat similar disputes and how little appetite exists for confronting the legality of emergency governance directly. 

The practical precedent is unmistakable. Officials learn that procedural shortcuts may survive judicial scrutiny. Citizens learn that courts are unlikely to provide meaningful after-the-fact accountability for pandemic-era overreach. 

That perception is corrosive. Courts maintain legitimacy by applying the law openly and consistently, especially in moments of crisis. When emergencies appear to operate under a softer legal standard, public trust erodes. The judiciary begins to look less like an independent arbiter and more like a stabilizer of government power. 

The Lesson California Courts Are Teaching 

The COVID era was rife with overreach that many institutions now quietly acknowledge in hindsight, and it demanded that courts clarify the limits of emergency authority. Instead, many cases have ended in procedural dissolutions that leave those limits blurred. Palicke is another reminder that in California, the judiciary is still reluctant to revisit the legality of pandemic governance even after the immediate crisis has cooled. Behind those procedural dismissals are real people — including children like Aidan Palicke — whose lives were unfairly disrupted, whose education was cut short, and who faced hostility and exclusion over a policy the courts declined to scrutinize.  

The rule of law is not tested in calm periods. It is tested when fear is high and the pressure to act is intense. If courts retreat from enforcing procedural safeguards at precisely that moment, they teach a lesson that will outlive COVID: that legality is negotiable when officials invoke an emergency. 

That lesson will not stay confined to public health. It will shape how future crises are governed and how far officials believe they can go without consequence. California’s courts may believe they are preserving institutional stability by closing these cases quietly. In reality, they are risking something far more fragile: the public’s belief that law, not power, ultimately governs. And once that belief is gone, no procedural doctrine can restore it.                                                         

Author’s note: The author’s former law firm represented the plaintiffs in this case. She was involved in earlier stages of the litigation but did not handle the appeal.