On Thursday, October 14th, the Texas Supreme Court ruled to temporarily block a mandate from the San Antonio Independent School District, which would have forced all employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or be terminated. The mandate had required that the employees be vaccinated by October 15th.
In issuing the temporary rejection, the Texas Supreme Court explained that they would need more time to look over the details of the case, and rejecting the mandates has been standard procedure.
“This case, like those regarding local governmental entities’ authority to mandate the wearing of masks, challenges the legality of the Governor’s orders under the Texas Disaster Act. We have not yet had the opportunity to consider the merits of these challenges,” the court opinion explained. “Our role has been to issue orders preserving the status quo. In the case of local governmental entities seeking to impose new mask mandates, we stayed temporary-relief orders permitting those mandates (In re Greg Abbott, 2 No. 21-0686; In re Greg Abbott, No. 21-0687).”
“This decision should serve as a reminder to all Texas school districts that they should be using their limited funds on educating children and equipping teachers, not defending unlawful vaccine mandates,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a press release.
The rejection of this mandate comes three days after Governor Greg Abbot banned vaccine mandates in Texas, effective immediately. The ban was made in response to President Joe Biden mandating vaccinations for all businesses with 100 or more employees and all federal workers, an act that Abbott called “yet another instance of federal overreach” from the Biden Administration.
“No entity in Texas can compel receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine by any individual, including an employee or a consumer, who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19,” Abbot said in the executive order. “I hereby suspend all relevant statutes to the extent necessary to enforce this prohibition.”