Texas Supreme Court Sides With Pro COVID Governor Greg Abbott On Banning Mask Mandates

The Supreme Court of the state of Texas has sided with Republican governor Greg Abbott after he was sued over his ban on mask mandates. The court has now, temporarily, told school districts who defied the governor's executive order that they CANNOT implement mask mandates for children going back to school. The governor has all kinds of authority under a 1975 Texas law, but a better legal argument from the plaintiffs likely could have resulted in a much different outcome. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Over the weekend, the Supreme Court in the state of Texas upheld Republican governor Greg Abbott's ban on mask mandates. The governor had been sued by several counties that had enacted their own mask mandates in defiance of the governor's executive order, banning mask mandates, and the Texas Supreme Court said, sorry, folks, the governor of Texas actually does have the authority under a 1975 law, the Texas disaster act, which basically gives the governor unlimited powers in the face of any kind of disaster like this and his order can supersede those local orders. So at least for now, temporarily, they're saying those mask mandates that a couple of counties had put in place mostly to protect children heading back to school, it's illegal, according to the Texas Supreme Court. Now, what really drives me crazy about this story is the fact that this is a fairly simple legal argument. Okay. Obviously, you know that under the 1975 Texas disaster act, the governor can do what he feels necessary to protect the public in the face of a disaster.

All these plaintiffs had to do was go to court and argue that though there was no legitimate public health or public, you know, crisis reason to ban mask mandates. If anything that had the opposite effect of what the Texas disaster act was put in place to do. Now, unfortunately I have not been able to find what kind of legal argument the plaintiff's used. But if they could have gone to court and proven that Abbott had no reason other than political motivations to put this mask mandate in place or ban on mask mandate in place to pander to the minority of his state, that is anti mask, we may have seen a different outcome here. This decision is going to be appealed. It may make it all the way to the US Supreme Court at which point, the, the powers of not just Greg Abbott, but possibly other governors across the country, who have also banned mask mandates, could come into question. And currently the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court with a six to three Republican majority, they really are a, a toss up, you know. We already saw last week, Amy Coney Barrett, who Republicans are now calling Amy Commie Barrett, uphold college's vaccine passports.

So we really don't know what to expect if one of these cases, whether it's from Texas or whether it's from Florida, whether it's from Dako, one of the Dakotas with Kristi Noem, it could actually have massive ramifications if the Supreme Court does the right thing. But unfortunately we cannot depend on them for that. Meanwhile, Texas has seen a 400% increase in COVID hospitalizations over the last month. The state is absolutely getting ravaged by this virus and their governor, Greg Abbott, is refusing to let cities, counties, municipalities and school boards do everything in their power to protect their residents. That's political motivation. That has nothing to do with the Texas disaster act. This case really could have been a slam dunk for these plaintiffs. So I am curious to find out what kind of arguments they used, because I, I just refuse to believe that they couldn't point out that this was purely politically motivated, having no basis in science. They should have won this case.