CHARLESTON — A group of parents with students in Cabell County Schools are seeking a judge to make state education officials create uniform COVID-19 protections, including indoor mask requirements.

According to a lawsuit filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court on Aug. 31, public interest attorney Sam Brown Petsonk is seeking a writ of mandamus on behalf of Cabell County parents Jennifer Anderson, Amy Reed and Christy Black.

The parents have children in the county school system, some of whom with autism or learning disabilities, and some have relatives at home with immunocompromised health conditions making them more susceptible to COVID-19 if their children bring the virus home from school. Cabell County is among 29 county school systems out of 55 without mask mandates for students, teachers and staff.

“Currently, certain schools are contradicting the advice of their medical advisers and providing highly unequal protections across the state’s 55 counties in violation of the Constitution and mandatory statutory duties,” Petsonk wrote.

Petsonk is asking the court to require county and state officials to abide by Article 12 Section 1, requiring the state to provide for a “thorough and efficient system of free schools.” Petsonk also accuses the officials of violating state code requiring the state to provide “for the health and cleanliness of pupils,” and violating the West Virginia Human Rights Act by providing unequal education by denying alternative education opportunities for students with disabilities.

“The state now delegates essentially all COVID-related decision-making to county school boards, without providing any required metrics or minimum planning standards for those lay decision-makers, thus leaving children without adequate or equitable risk-assessment metric of exposure control plans,” Petsonk wrote. “Children with special needs are especially vulnerable and totally unprotected without consistent, risk-based exposure control planning.”

The Department of Education released its school recovery and guidance plan Aug. 5. Decisions on whether to stay open or go to remote learning during instances of high virus transmission are up to county superintendents and county health departments, though any days lost will have to be made up.

The use of face masks in classrooms by students, teachers and staff is not mandated by the state, with individual counties empowered to make decisions regarding mask mandates as advised by county health departments. As of Wednesday, there were 46 outbreaks in schools in 24 counties.

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com.