The pandemic has been a disaster for public education. Closed schools and self-serving teachers unions have undermined parents' faith in the system. The result has been a massive move to private schools and to homeschooling. More than 11 percent of American households are homeschooling their kids. The numbers among black and Hispanic households are now even higher than this average.

There are a lot of reasons for this – I wrote a book on the trend, "The New School," almost a decade ago. But COVID has accelerated things dramatically.

Homeschooling is safer from infection and, more important, from the ever-changing whims of the educational bureaucracy. Rather than put up with the increasingly intrusive and authoritarian behavior of educrats, parents are taking control.

They're also finding out that their kids are learning more and faster. (My own daughter wasn't homeschooled, but after concluding that her public high school was wasting a huge chunk of her day, she switched to an online program and graduated early, starting college at 16.)

Now a federal court in my hometown has provided another reason: You're not only under the thumbs of intrusive educrats; you're also subject to whatever diktats activists can persuade a federal court to issue. In the case of Knox County, Tenn., schools, that consists of an order to mask all children, despite orders from Tennessee's governor, Bill Lee, and the Knox County Board of Education to the contrary.

The court's order is based on the Americans with Disabilities Act. Some parents whose kids have medical conditions that might make them particularly at-risk if they contract COVID sued, demanding the school board order all students to wear masks as a way of accommodating their kids' disabilities. The school board argued that the ADA requires only a "reasonable accommodation" for disabilities, and that it was prepared to provide that by offering online classes or classes apart from the general student body.

The court held that wasn't enough. The only "reasonable accommodation" it was prepared to accept was to place the vulnerable students in the general student body and to require everyone to wear masks at all times.

Regardless of whether the court is right here (which, to be honest, I doubt), the impact on public schools is likely to be disastrous. Before the ruling, if you didn't like what public schools were doing along these lines, you could go to elected officials, like the governor and school board, and argue for your preferred policy. Those officials could weigh the pros and cons and choose the outcome best for everyone.

Now, however, the decisions aren't made by officials elected by the public but by a federal judge at the behest of a small number of activists. You may pay your taxes to the state and local governments that run the schools, but the choices on how to run them will be made elsewhere, by people you don't get to vote for or against.

Already parents are complaining that the court's decision is simplistic. It offers only two grounds for exemption from the mask mandate, for autism and for students with a tracheotomy. Parents whose kids have other medical or psychological reasons for not wearing a mask are told they'll have to keep their kids home. (Their kids' disabilities won't be accommodated, apparently.)

The parents of 7-year-old Abel Ogle say he loves school but can't wear a mask – he has Down's and just won't keep it on, no matter what he's told, because he doesn't understand – so this is effectively an expulsion for him. Many other parents are coming forward with similar problems. There are, it turns out, a lot of kids who can't or shouldn't wear a mask all day.

Even if the court resolves these objections, the message to parents is simple: The system doesn't care about your kids as much as it does about politics and squeaky wheels, and if you want to control your kids' education you'll need to take charge of it yourself.

Many parents will listen, and the public schools will lose students, funding and public support. Maybe they should.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.