An Arkansas judge on Friday temporarily blocked the state from enforcing a ban on mask mandates, including public schools, after lawmakers left the prohibition in place. Pulaski County Judge Tim Fox issued a preliminary injunction against the mandate, saying that it discriminated between public and private schools. The order came several hours after Arkansas’s state Legislature ended a special session and didn’t vote on the ban on mask mandates. Fox, who was elected, wrote his opinion in response to the parents of two school-age children who claimed the ban on masks violates the rights of children in public schools. The law “cannot be enforced in any shape, fashion or form” pending further court action, Fox wrote. In April, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, signed Act 1002, which prevented government agencies and schools from enforcing COVID-19 mask mandates. The governor requested the special session to overturn the ban on mask mandates, claiming …