The U.S. Department of Justice Tuesday asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to reverse a federal judge’s ruling that lifted the Biden administration’s public transportation mask mandate nationwide.

Attorneys for the Justice Department said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order requiring people to wear masks on trains, buses and airplanes falls within the agency’s authority, and pointed to the Public Health Service Act enacted in 1944. Part of the law allows the CDC to require measures that “directly relate to preventing the interstate spread of disease by identifying, isolating, and destroying the disease itself,” the DOJ wrote.