Last weekend, state Rep. Brad Halbrook, whose legislative district includes southern Champaign County, reposted on Facebook a message from attorney Thomas DeVore, a southern Illinois attorney who has gone to war in the courtroom with Gov. J.B. Pritzker and government regulators.

“Your children’s education is a fundamental right which cannot be withheld by government,” DeVore wrote. “There is no set of facts wherein a public school can except your child from exercising this right because of these arbitrary restrictemmendations. Tell your school district your child will not be abiding by the mask requirement. When your children, and thousands of other kids, show up on the first day of school with no mask, your school districts will have to figure out how to educate these children.”

DeVore has found a lucrative legal niche, filing lawsuit after lawsuit against government agencies.

In some cases, government agencies are suing each other. The school district in Hutsonville, 100 miles southeast of Champaign-Urbana, last week voted to hire DeVore with an eye toward suing the state school board and Department of Public Health over COVID-related requirements that include the use of face coverings; symptom screening, including temperature checks; and a prohibition on gatherings of more than 50 people.

Those are hardly “arbitrary restrictemmendations,” as DeVore calls them. They come from scientists and physicians.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued similar guidance, calling for physical distancing of 3 to 6 feet in the classroom, temperature screening when possible and the use of face coverings for elementary students “if the risk of touching their mouth or nose is not greater than the benefit of reducing the spread of COVID-19.”

The Centers for Disease Control “recommends all people 2 years of age and older wear a face cloth covering in public settings and when around people who don’t live in your household, especially when other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.”

Yet Halbrook, a Shelbyville Republican whose expansive, largely rural district includes Champaign, Vermilion, Douglas, Edgar, Moultrie, Shelby and Macon counties, reposted DeVore’s incautious message.

“I tend to agree with Tom (DeVore) and what he is doing,” Halbrook said. “I wasn’t trying to make a statement. I put it up there to see what would happen. It was kind of interesting what did happen.”

Even though Halbrook’s district is overwhelmingly conservative (Donald Trump got 65 percent of the vote in 2016), his Facebook post attracted a range of comment. Some was even factual, much was not.

“How can anyone expect kids especially young kids to wear a mask all day and focus with the lack oxygen?” was one response.

“The U.S. Constitution states that no one can be mandated to wear anything,” said another commenter.

“Do you believe a mask stops the virus from passing through?” asked a respondent.

The American Lung Association says that masks do not cause low oxygen levels. The U.S. Constitution makes no reference to what clothes people can wear. And the Johns Hopkins University Medical School says that “masks help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“Because it’s possible to have coronavirus without showing symptoms, it is best to wear a face covering even if you think you are healthy. A mask helps contain small droplets that come out of your mouth and/or nose when you talk, sneeze or cough. If you have COVID-19 and are not showing symptoms, a face mask reduces your chance of spreading the infection to others. If you are healthy, a mask may protect you from larger droplets from people around you.”

Halbrook said he was not encouraging citizens to use children as weapons in a political fight.

“That was not the statement I was trying to make,” he said. “I tended to agree with (DeVore’s) statement and I wanted to see how my constituents responded.”

Yet he said if he had school-age children, he “probably” would send them to school without face masks. And he said he is unswayed by a growing consensus, even among Republican leaders — including Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Liz Cheney — that wearing a mask in public is the right thing to do.

“I’ve always said it’s a personal decision and I don’t think Chicago or Springfield or Washington, D.C., should be mandating this. There is nothing in the Constitution that allows any of the elected officials to mandate this,” Halbrook said. “It’s a personal decision. This should be a parental freedom of choice decision.”

He said the only time he’s worn a face mask was when the Legislature was in session in May and it was required.

“We vacationed three weeks ago for seven days in Tennessee,” he said. “Didn’t wear a mask. That was three weeks ago. We’re not positive (for COVID-19).”

Therein lies the rub with Americans who see a simple face mask as an enslaving restriction on their Constitutional liberties, as people once viewed seatbelt mandates or public smoking prohibitions. It’s not just about them.

“My understanding is that a mask doesn’t really protect you as much as it protects other people,” said Congressman Tom Rice, a South Carolina Republican who contracted the virus a few weeks ago.

There’s a lesson there in humility and humanity for attorneys and politicians who want to weaponize schoolchildren in an ideological skirmish while a larger, worldwide battle rages.