LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – Who should decide when kids wear masks or not? Some in the state government have fought to bring that control to local schools. Now a Republican representative from Kentucky wants a new bill to come back and change that.

On Tuesday morning, a bill on the Kentucky House floor would change who controls whether your kids have to wear a mask at school. House Bill 51, proposed by Rep. Lynn Bechler (R-District 4/Marion), makes face coverings optional in schools. Bechler says the masks have impacted speech, hearing and communication and are causing asthma. Although he did not present a specific source or research.

“Child suicide rates are on the rise,” Bechler said. “The CDC in one study showed an increase of over 50% for girls and just under 4% for women.”

WAVE News found no CDC research correlating increased suicide rates with wearing a cloth mask.

“The bill itself recognizes that there are multiple mutated strands of COVID-19,” said Rep. Attica Scott (D-District 41/Louisville). “Why wouldn’t we want to protect our children and our most vulnerable from these multiple strands of the virus?

“Because masks don’t work,” Bechler said.

“That’s not true,” Scott replied.

The hearing ended with a County Oldham mother named Kristen showing a photo of her four-year-old son, Theo.

“He’s too young to be vaccinated,” Kristen said of Theo, who was born with malformed, displaced and missing internal organs.

“By advocating for this bill, you are actively advocating against medically fragile children and their families,” Kristen said.

The bill will proceed to the debate phase. Several representatives argued that they were only pushing for local control of mandates and now this bill seeks to do the opposite and remove that control. They said they were concerned about the mixed signals that might be sending about local control.

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