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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Texas attorney general sues schools for requiring masks

The Republican attorney general says school districts cannot require masks even as Covid-19 outbreaks have forced dozens of them to stop in-person classes.

(CN) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued several school districts Friday for making their students and staff wear masks. He claims they are flouting the governor’s executive order intended to let Texans make health decisions free from government control.

The number of Texas children hospitalized with Covid-19 reached an all-time high of 345 on Sept. 5. Dozens of Texas school districts have had to stop in-person classes and return to virtual classes amid outbreaks of the highly infectious delta variant.

This week a 4-year-old Galveston County girl developed a fever and died of Covid in her sleep one day after her mother tested positive for the virus.

Galveston Independent School District is one of the districts Paxton sued Friday. It has required masks since its school year started Aug. 23. But 165 students and staff caught the virus in August; another 95 fell sick with Covid this month.

And the district has 64 active cases, according to its Covid-19 dashboard.

With no vaccine yet approved for children under 12, health officials, school administrators and parents have accused the state’s Republican leaders of caring more about making political statements than the health of Texas youth.

Governor Greg Abbott issued a mandate in July 2020 requiring Texans to wear masks in all buildings and crowded outdoor spaces during a surge of Covid cases.

But after Texans started receiving Covid vaccines early this year, Abbott repealed the mask order and took up the mantra of personal responsibility.

He issued executive order GA-38 in June barring government entities from forcing anyone to get vaccinated, and any jurisdiction from forcing people to wear masks, while encouraging residents of areas where Covid is spreading rapidly to wear them.

Abbott did not budge even as the delta variant caused the number of Texans hospitalized with the virus to jump from around 1,600 on July 1 to 13,790 on Sept. 1.

After Democratic officials in the counties of Dallas and Bexar, home to San Antonio, obtained court orders allowing them to move forward with mask mandates for government buildings and schools, Abbott and Paxton vowed to fight it out in court.

“The path forward relies on personal responsibility — not government mandates. The State of Texas will continue to vigorously fight … to protect the rights and freedoms of all Texans,” Abbott said in an Aug. 11 statement about the litigation.

Abbott and Paxton convinced the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court on Aug. 15 to block the counties’ mask orders while the cases play out before lower courts.

Just five days later, however, the state supreme court refused to block temporary restraining orders granted by a Democratic judge in Travis County, in the state capital Austin. The order allowed several school districts and the state’s most populous county Harris, whose seat is Houston, to proceed with mask edicts.

Paxton’s lawsuits filed Friday against the Galveston, Richardson, Round Rock, Elgin, Spring and Sherman independent school districts will likely add more confusion and conflicting orders to the legal battle over masks.

“Defendants are deliberately violating state law. In flouting GA-38’s ban on mask mandates, defendants challenge the policy choices made by the state’s commander in chief during times of disaster,” opens Paxton’s lawsuit against Round Rock ISD, its superintendent and school board members

It’s unclear why Paxton chose to sue these six school districts given a total of 104 Texas school districts are making their students and staff wear masks. Paxton names them all on his list of “non-compliant” governmental entities.

Paxton and Abbott are also eager to sue President Joe Biden over his new push to get shots in the arms of 80 million unvaccinated Americans.

Biden announced Thursday his administration will soon roll out rules requiring Covid vaccines for all federal employees and contractors, and health care workers at hospitals that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Under penalty of fines, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will also force companies with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccines, or weekly testing, for their staff.

“Biden’s new nat’l vaxx mandate on private biz may be the most unconstitutional, illegal thing I’ve ever seen out of any Admin in modern American history,” Paxton tweeted Friday.  “This is an egregious, tyrannical power grab that stands no chance in court. I’ll be suing this disastrous Admin very soon.”

More than 58,000 Texans have died from the coronavirus, there an estimated 308,340 active cases in the state and 306 children are hospitalized with the virus, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Follow Cameron Langford on Twitter

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Categories / Civil Rights, Education, Government, Health

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