Younger kids are inherently messy and chaotic. Older kids live to test the limits and boundaries they are given – I would give it two weeks before the newest "game" going around somehow involves coughing into other people’s faces.
Now, take that, and add in a percentage of parents actively encouraging their kids to disobey any rules about masks or social distancing.
Beyond that, I haven't even read a credible analysis that believes mask and social distancing mandates would not be legal. To the contrary, just about everybody I've heard/read from suggests it's settled law that the government can take these measures in the interest of public health during a pandemic.
Really it's just been a bunch of politicizing, hand waving, hollow platitudes, and feigning ignorance of the data and CDC guidelines accompanying a refusal to mandate. I believe the few court cases so far have resulted in the courts upholding mandates right?
Though "case law" has always been weird to me, because sometimes it just gets reviewed or overturned and now something that was taken as gospel in the judicial system can be 100% turned around, with zero new text in the law books
Case law is text in the law books. In the US, it is most of the text in the law books.
A “random judge” has virtually no power of that kind; trial court decisions are rarely published and, if published, are still only persuasive rather than binding authority. Appellate court decisions are binding precedent on inferior courts, but appointments to such courts are highly scrutinized for that reason, and the decisions aren't made by a single judge.