Local Texas officials trying to force people to wear masks to guard against the resurgent COVID-19 virus got a boost Tuesday from a state judge who sided with San Antonio’s top elected officials that state emergency powers laws don’t let the governor override local mask mandates.
Governor Greg Abbott, a staunch Republican whose re-election bid was recently endorsed by former President Donald Trump, outlawed local mask ordinances despite soaring COVID-19 infection rates and hospitalizations in Texas. Intensive care beds in many cities are in such short supply that Abbott asked hospitals to limit optional procedures to free up beds for more COVID-19 victims.
Abbott’s order also threatens school districts with hefty fines if they require students or staff to wear masks –- a requirement school district leaders in San Antonio and Dallas have defiantly announced for the fall semester that begins in a few weeks.
San Antonio’s mayor and top elected county official sued to block Abbott’s executive order from canceling out recently reinstated local orders requiring masks on all employees and visitors to city and Bexar County facilities and on local public transportation. Dallas County’s top elected official also sued Abbott on the same issue, but the state judge who held a separate hearing on that dispute Tuesday hasn’t yet issued a decision.
The debate over wearing masks as the highly contagious delta variant spreads extends far beyond Texas. Florida parents have sued Governor Ron DeSantis for blocking local school district mask mandates, even as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations surge in that state.
At least seven states, including Arizona and Arkansas, have banned local school districts from requiring masks on students. Other states, like California and Washington, have required masks in public schools, but left flexibility for districts and private schools. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its guidance, citing the nationwide upwelling of delta infections, that all school children and staff should wear masks while indoors.
The fight also implicates decisions by companies requiring customers to wear masks or show proof of vaccination. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. on Sunday won a preliminary injunction overriding a Florida law that prohibited the company from requiring passengers to prove they’d gotten COVID-19 shots before boarding a ship.
In temporarily blocking the Texas governor’s mask ban, state judge Antonia Arteaga said local public health officials’ concerns for school children swayed her thinking.
“I don’t mind letting you guys know that the affidavit of our local public health authority weighed heavily in my decision, as does the fact that the school year for many of our children, including those under 12, has begun,” Arteaga told lawyers Tuesday in her Bexar County courtroom. “And those under 12 of course, as you know, don’t have access to the vaccine, and they’re already in school. So I do find that this is necessary,” she said, according to a report published by The San Antonio Report, a local non-profit newsroom.
Abbott has repeatedly defended his stance as a call for personal responsibility over what he considers authoritarian action by the state. His critics contend the governor overstepped his authority by interfering with local officials’ legislatively granted right to make decisions on how to best protect their populations during an emergency.
San Antonio’s Mayor Ron Nirenberg called Abbott’s actions ironic in a statement announcing his lawsuit: “Ironically, the governor is taking a state law meant to facilitate local action during an emergency and using it to prohibit local response to the emergency he himself declared.”
“The governor is not vested with authority to control everything that happens in the state,” Brent Walker, a lawyer for Dallas County’s top official said Tuesday in the Dallas court proceeding. “People are going to die unless we start doing more.”
Representatives of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
