Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, U.S. District Court Judge

Mask-wearers on U.S. flights today find themselves a solid minority, and travelers largely can thank—or blame, depending on their masking stance—a Florida district court ruling for the quick erosion of airline mask mandates.

On April 18, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the federal mask mandate for passengers on airlines and other forms of public transportation, ruling that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was not justified in the order and did not implement it under proper federal procedures. In short order, U.S. carriers dropped their masking requirements, as did Amtrak, Uber and Lyft.

Mizelle was a relative newcomer to the federal bench when she made the ruling, having been nominated by former President Donald Trump in September 2020. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 49-to-41 vote later that year, despite objections from the American Bar Association that the then 33-year-old did not have enough law experience for a federal judgeship.

The CDC maintained its recommendation that passengers wear masks on airlines, but that advice was not heeded for long. In a column for Forbes last June, former Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza said that while a majority of passengers continued to wear masks for about a week after the ruling, that quickly dropped off in subsequent weeks. It was not surprising, given that a TripIt survey of more than 700 users released a few weeks before the ruling showed that 54 percent said they were ready for the mask mandate to expire.

The ruling also put the federal government in a weaker position for such mandates in the future, according to Baldanza.

"Re-introducing a federal mandate would come with a large thud and likely quicker legal action to fight it," he wrote. "Even though not everyone makes the right personal decisions, there is a cultural aversion to being told what to do."

Since the ruling, mask requirements for airlines have been easing around the world, albeit in a less dramatic fashion. The European Union removed its recommendation that face masks be mandatory aboard aircraft in May, and the Canadian government ended its masking requirements on Oct. 1. A few countries still are bucking the trend, however, such as Brazil, which in November reinstated mask requirements for airlines and airports.