Some Butler County parents are pushing back against a controversial state mandate of mask-wearing in schools.

Filed Friday, the lawsuit questions whether an order enacted by Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam is valid.

The petitioners' attorney, Thomas King III of Butler, said this is a hot issue for people in Butler County and across the state.

“We were contacted by literally dozens if not hundreds of people,” King said Sunday. “I had fistfuls of calls I couldn't return over the past week all over the state of Pennsylvania.”

Seven of the nine parents listed as plaintiffs are Butler County residents whose children attend schools, including Butler Area School District and Slippery Rock Area School District.

Victoria Baptiste, of Oakland Township, is one of the petitioners. Baptiste has a young daughter who attends one of the Butler schools.

“At the end of the day, we're all these children have,” she said. “Who else is going to be their voice?”Baptiste said her daughter has a stutter, and a mask compounds the problem. She said her daughter recognizes how the mask makes it worse, and it is making the girl anxious to go to school.Baptiste said on at least one occasion, her daughter came home crying from school, and she told her it was because she was worried about wearing a mask.“It just makes it very difficult,” Baptiste said. “I just want her to have a pleasant kindergarten experience and not have negative feelings toward school.”The issue has garnered a lot of attention since the lawsuit's filing. The Butler Eagle's Facebook post about the news has received more than 475 comments and 250 shares as of press time Monday.

The comments showed the division in thinking related to the masks and the mandates. While some applauded the petitioners, others claimed they prefer masks be worn in schools.One commenter, Jill Basel of Slippery Rock, said masks will help keep children in school and out of remote learning. She also said people against masks are ignoring science and setting bad examples for children.“That you don't care about science, you don't care about rules that you don't agree with and that in the land of the free, the only one that matters is oneself: and forget the community and fellow humans we coexist with,” she said.Jen McCall, a parent with multiple children in Butler schools, said nobody truly wants to put masks on their children, but she and her husband believe having their children wear masks is at least not making the situation worse.McCall said there is a 10-day quarantine period for exposure without masks; however, if both the exposed student and infected student had both been wearing masks, then the quarantine period is not necessary.McCall said she and her husband can't afford to take off work, and the chances of these exposures are high for their family, since her children in the system are in different schools.“My kids did virtual last year and want to be in school,” McCall said. “As much as we don't like it, if wearing a mask helps them achieve staying in person, then so be it.”

Many commenters opposing masks claimed the cloths do more harm than good, but they provided no evidence or sources for those claims.For Baptiste, her focus isn't on the masks, but on what the order and mandate infringes upon, which is her freedom to make the choice as a parent for her daughter.She said she would fully respect the right of a parent who chooses to mask their child, but she does not believe it's the government's responsibility to compel healthy children to wear masks.“I hope I can be part of the change that obviously this administration needs to see,” Baptiste said. “Us parents, we're not backing down. We're not backing down at all.”