Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, pushed forward with reissuing a ban on vaccine mandates Wednesday even after a Dallas county judge shot down the governor’s ban on mask mandates.
Dallas Judge Tonya Parker issued a temporary injunction against Abbott’s mask-mandate ban, siding with Judge Clay Jenkins from the Fifth Court of Appeals in the latter’s argument that the ban interferes with Jenkins’ ability to manage the COVID-19 outbreak (in Texas, judges function like county executives).
The decision from Parker will allow Jenkins’ mask order for schools to remain in place for the time being.
Yet in a separate ruling, the Texas State Supreme Court on Thursday temporarily blocked San Antonio’s mask mandate for public schools. Moreover, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s appeal of the Dallas case has made the mask mandate there temporarily unenforceable.
“Governor Abbott’s resolve to protect the rights and freedoms of all Texans has not wavered,” Renae Eze, Abbott’s spokeswoman, said in an e-mail Wednesday. “The Office of the Attorney General has successfully defended the Governor’s executive orders in the past, and we are confident they will do so again.”
For her part, Parker argued that keeping the mask mandate in place is a question of public health and safety, writing in her ruling that Jenkins proved that Dallas County residents “will suffer probable imminent and irreparable injury through County Judge Jenkins being precluded from exercising his authority” to mandate masks in public, ABC 8 WFAA reported.
The legal battle began when Commissioner J.J. Koch filed a lawsuit against Jenkins earlier this month after being removed from a courtroom for refusing to wear a mask. Jenkins responded by filing a lawsuit against Governor Abbott over his executive order banning mask mandates.
While the mask battle plays out, Abbott has pressed forward in his effort to ban state and local government officials from imposing vaccine mandates. The governor had previously signed an executive order banning vaccine mandates for those products under emergency approval. The new order bans vaccine requirements even for those approved by the FDA, as the Pfizer shot was this week.
Abbott also plans to add the vaccine mandate question to the legislature’s special session, which finally had its quorum restored in the House after Democrat lawmakers had walked out en masse to prevent the passage of a vote-reform bill they oppose.
Texas joins 11 other states that have banned vaccine mandates through legislation or executive order — Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah. All have Republican governors.
However, the measures from Republicans have been focused on prohibiting mandates that come from the government. But most Americans struggling with the threat of the vaccine are faced with a different dilemma: Mandates from employers.
As The New American reported:
While banks including Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, much like Goldman Sachs, will allow their unvaccinated employees to work from home, investment fund SkyBridge Capital will simply fire those unvaxxed. “It’s get vaxxed or axed at SkyBridge,” its co-founder and managing founder Anthony Scaramucci told the paper….
The Business Roundtable, a nonprofit lobbyist association whose members are chief executive officers of major U.S. companies such as Amazon, Best Buy, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and numerous others, welcomed Pfizer and BioNTech getting full FDA approval and called on policymakers to support businesses’ ability to mandate the shots.
Some companies are getting even more creative in twisting their employees’ arms to accept the vaccine. Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian notified employees Wednesday that they will face $200 monthly increases on their health-insurance premiums starting November 1 if they aren’t vaccinated against COVID.
And marines are in danger of losing their pensions, tuition assistance, access to the G.I. Bill, and other key military benefits if they refuse to get the shot.
Colonel Teague Pastel, a commanding officer at the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., wrote in an e-mail: “Please continue engaging with our troops on the importance of vaccinating, and stress that it is still voluntary at this time. However, once the vaccine becomes mandatory they need to be prepared to separate and potentially lose benefits.”
With the assault coming from both government and the private sector, and the courts stepping in the way of governments that attempt to safeguard Americans’ medical freedom, it seems the fight against tyranny will be a long haul.
