Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday threatened to sue the city of Austin and surrounding Travis County after officials there, citing the continued threat of Covid-19, said they would continue to require residents to wearing masks, even “outside their home”.
Paxton’s threat comes on the same day that the state’s masking mandate, which the Texas government, Greg Abbott, did away with last week, officially expired.
“City / provincial leaders should not think clearly,” Paxton said a tweet. ‘Maybe it’s oxygen deficiency due to five masking. Either way, they’ve tried it before. They lost. Travis County and Austin have a few hours to comply with state law, or I’ll sue. ‘
Paxton, who, like Abbott, is a Republican, has threatened Travis County Judge Andy Brown, Austin Mayor Steve Adler, and dr. Mark Escott of the Austin-Travis County Health Authority. They were given until Wednesday night to comply.
Adler responded to the impending lawsuit by saying he and Brown would apply the security mandates. “We will fight the assault of the Abbott government and Attorney General Paxton against doctors and data for as long as we can,” Adler said in a statement to the U.S. statesman in Austin on Wednesday.
“I believe leaders should be clear and unambiguous in their communication and messages about masking. Masks work! The governor and attorney general are simply wrong.”
Escott made it clear Tuesday that he, as a public health expert, did not agree with Abbott’s decision to lift the mask mandate, saying Austin’s restrictions apply until April 15.
“Wearing a face mask is one of the easiest ways to delay the transmission of diseases in our community,” Escott said in a statement released by the City of Austin. “While the vaccine is being administered, we are still not in a place of herd immunity and people need to wear face masks in public and around non-domestic members so that we can avoid a surge in cases.”
Only 8.5 percent of the population in Texas has been fully vaccinated since Wednesday, the latest statistics showed.
The statement from the city of Austin also contains the following rule: “In the city of Austin, an individual must also wear a face mask when he is outside their home.”
Austin, which is also the capital of the Lone Star State, is not the only major Texas city to oppose Abbott’s executive order.
But Austin’s defiance seems to extend beyond those of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, El Paso and San Antonio, all of which have promised to keep mask mandates in place, but only on city property or in public schools.
The U.S. government also continues to require Texans to mask in all federal buildings and courthouses and on public transportation.
Abbott’s surprise announcement last week that he was abandoning the mask mandate and weakening other restrictions on Covid-19 is being sharply criticized by doctors, who warned it could cause another increase in new cases. Political opponents accused the governor of trying to divert voters’ attention from the state’s catastrophic response to the deadly winter storm that shut down the power grid and left millions of Texans in their homes for days.
President Joe Biden cites the step taken by Abbott, as well as the similar step by the Government of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, as examples of ‘Neanderthal thinking’ and ‘a big mistake’. Biden has blasted both leaders for easing restrictions, even after federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of dissatisfaction in the face of emerging coronavirus variants.
Abbott insisted that “state mandates are no longer needed”, although he conceded “Covid did not suddenly disappear.”
“It’s time to open Texas 100 percent,” he said.
Under Abbott’s executive order, private businesses could reopen fully provided Covid-19 hospitalizations are low.
Abbott’s mandate also makes it clear that local governments will not be able to fine people who refuse to wear masks in the businesses that still need them.
“No jurisdiction shall impose a fine of any kind for failure to wear a face mask or failure to carry the instruction to customers or employees,” reads its order.
But Abbott’s order allows local officials to “enforce offending laws and remove offenders at the request of a business or other property owner.”
Judge Nelson Wolff in Bexar, San Antonio, said local law enforcement would not hesitate to do so.
“If a business calls and says, ‘This man violates my property and does not follow the rules I have, you will take him out and remove’ … the sheriff said he would go and remove it,” Wolff said .
Masks will also be needed for the already reduced number of people attending the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament that San Antonio is hosting this year.
Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers quoted Abbott’s executive order in his announcement that he plans to fill the plots at 100 percent at the Globe Life Stadium in Arlington this season. The Rangers are the first Major League Baseball team to do so.
But the team will still require fans to wear masks unless they are eating or drinking, and will give them ‘three times’ before being penalized for not complying.
“We are confident that we can do this in a responsible and safe manner,” said team president and COO Neil Leibman. “There is so much pent-up demand for people who want to go to events in a safe environment.”
Emily Berman, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Houston Law Center, said federal law protects Americans from discrimination based on race, color, gender, disability, religion, marital status, national origin, and citizenship – but does not carry do not mask. ”
Berman nevertheless told NBC News and other local news outlets that businesses must require people to wear masks and that customers “do not have a constitutional right to enter a particular store or a particular business.”
“Businesses can have their own policies,” Berman said. ‘I mean, how many restaurants have you seen that say’ no shirt, no shoes, no service ‘? “
Texas still reports nearly 3,000 new coronavirus cases a day, and alarming numbers have risen 1.6 percent in the past week, according to information compiled by The Covid Tracking Project, though more and more Texans are being vaccinated.
Public health experts have warned of another possible resurgence of new Covid-19 infections in the wake of the winter blast that forced many Texans to abandon their homes and go to heated shelters where there was little, if any, social distance .
Since the onset of the pandemic, Texas – the second most populous state in the country after California, with nearly 29 million people – has reported about 2.7 million cases and nearly 46,000 Covid-19 deaths, according to the latest NBC News figures.
The majority of the infections and deaths came after Abbott disobeyed the advice of public health experts, and, like Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, reopened his state after only a brief quarantine. Both governors closed bars last June and issued other public health mandates after the pandemic began sweeping through their states.
By making Texas the largest state in the country that ended the mask mandate, Abbott argued that his state was now “in a very different position” than last March when he reluctantly issued his first executive orders to spread the coronavirus. to delay.
“We have vaccinations now,” Abbott said, adding that Texas people now vaccinate at 1 million a week.
Dr. Mark McClellan, a former adviser to Abbott, who previously served as president of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under President George W. Bush, disagrees.
“We need to remember that we still have a significant risk of spreading among people who are at risk for complications, so (we just want to take the foot off the brake carefully,” McClellan told the U.S. statesman earlier this week.
“There are still a lot of people who are at risk of having serious consequences that are not yet protected by vaccines.”
According to the latest federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Texas has received 9.7 million doses so far and has delivered 7.3 million shots.