Parents of students in Grove City, New Castle, and six other Western Pennsylvania school districts have gone to federal court challenging the state’s classroom mask mandate.

Attorney Alexander Lindsay Jr. has filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Pennsylvania’s acting health secretary, acting deputy education secretary, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

The suit wants the court to issue an injunction against school mask mandates issued by the state, alleging that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and other physicians have been telling parents that they will not support their requests for medical exemptions from mask-wearing.

Ten parents are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including Kimberly Griffin of Grove City, as well as Paul Neubecker and Kristy Campbell of New Castle.

Griffin’s children, ages eight and six, are enrolled in an individualized education plan at Grove City’s Hillview Elementary School due to learning disabilities, according to the lawsuit.

Griffin alleges that her eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter are being required to wear plastic face shields in school, despite complaints that the shields are fogging up and hampering their ability to learn.

According to the lawsuit, a nurse at UMPC Children’s Community Pediatrics of Grove City told the children’s mother that no doctors at the facility would be signing exemptions for the mask mandate.

Kristy Campbell is the mother and Paul Neubecker is the stepfather of a nine-year-old girl in the New Castle Schools who, according to the lawsuit, is diagnosed with ADHD and extreme social anxiety.

The parents say their daughter has been separated from their classmates for failing to wear a mask.

Attempts to obtain a mental health exemption for the child have failed.  The lawsuit states that the daughter’s pediatrician’s office would not provide an exemption because they were “not ready to put their license to practice on the line” by signing an exemption.

Neubecker says his stepdaughter’s psychiatrist declined to meet with him.

The school has also rejected as unacceptable, a mask exemption submitted by the Heritage Family Practice.

The couple’s daughter was given a three-day suspension and told that if she returned to class without a mask would face another suspension followed by expulsion, according to the suit.

The child has been attending classes remotely, which her parents say is not an acceptable substitute for in-person learning.

The defendants have yet to answer the lawsuit which seeks an injunction against the mandate and order against alleged blanket refusals to consider requests for school mask exemptions and evaluations.