This anti-mask campaigner is taking her fight to the courts.
Jennifer Reinoehl of Granger, Indiana has filed suit against more than a dozen entities, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Krispy Kreme and Sephora, alleging their policies “discriminated” against people with disabilities, Reinoehl told Insider.
“I’ve been horribly discriminated against and not been allowed to enter a lot of stores,” she said on Wednesday. “I’ve been harassed.”
Reinhoehl’s 380-page filing recounts her interactions with the 16 named defendants — businesses, government agencies and individual public health leaders, including the CDC’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, individually — which usually see her being forced to leave such establishments for refusing to wear a mask.
At an AMC Theatre in Elkhart, Indiana, Reinoehl and her husband were turned away and refunded for refusing to wear a mask, despite a relatively empty theater. A Sephora employee also allegedly stopped Reinoehl at the entrance to one of its stores.
More troubling, she also attempted to visit a health clinic in her community, which said they could not admit her unless she agreed to wear a mask, amidst other sick and immunocompromised individuals present.
“It would have been easy for her and her masked husband to stay six feet away from any other patron since there were few (if any) people in attendance,” the lawsuit states.
Public health officials are clear on the issue: Wearing a mask is a “key measure” to prevent COVID-19 transmission, along with physical distancing, avoiding crowds and vigilance in hygiene.
Moreover, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology has previously urged asthma patients to wear a mask, despite fears it may impair their ability to breathe and to talk to their asthma or allergy specialist about their options.
The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America as well as the Allergy and Asthma Network echo the AAAI’s recommendations.
The basis of her case seems to rely on the debunking of “Miasma theory,” which puts the onus of disease transmission on “bad air” — true of some respiratory illnesses, but useless against other ailments of yore, such as cholera, which spread through contaminated water. Supplanted in the late 19th century by “Germ theory,” scientists came to understand that bacterial and viral pathogens are responsible for “bad” air, as well as water, food and that which otherwise may carry disease.
Exhibits to support Reinoehl’s case included statistics surrounding the pneumonic plague pandemic, which saw many low-ranking hospital staff become infected despite wearing masks made of thick gauze. Researchers have later attributed this correlation to the fact that these workers had poor training, unlike physicians who also wore masks, yet fared much better.
“They did research across all the bases and the United States Navy,” she told Insider of the study, published in 1919. “In fact, they even quarantined an entire island. And they said the only thing you can do if a pandemic comes again is build more hospitals.”
Though Reinoehl acknowledges that some illnesses may spread via infected aerosols, her pièce de résistance comes from a report issued by the secretary of the Navy more than a century ago.
Reinoehl has claimed that masks cannot be mandated legitimately without the Food and Drug Administration roundly approving all face masks as effective — as they recently did for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
The claimant, a nondenominational Protestant Christian, told Insider that prayer led her to take legal action, “like God was directing me,” Reinoehl said, and believes she’s crusading on behalf of others.
“They’ve probably had some even worse experiences than me,” she said.
