Governor Gregg Abbott, like some other Republican governors, banned mask mandates, preventing school districts from exercising local control about how best to protect their students. A federal judge ruled that Abbott’s ban violates the rights of students with disabilities and cannot be imposed on any district. This is good news for parents who want to protect their children against a deadly virus.
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates in Texas schools violates the rights of students with disabilities, clearing the path for districts in the state to issue their own rules for face coverings, a decision that could affect more than 5 million students.
The ruling comes after months of politicized disputes over measures at the state level opposing mask-wearing policies that had been intended to prevent the spread of Covid.
The lawsuit, which sought to overturn the mandate, was filed on behalf of several families of students with disabilities and the organization Disability Rights Texas.
They stated that the defendants — the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton; the commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, Mike Morath; and the Texas Education Agency — had put students with disabilities at risk through their complete erasure of mask mandates.
The governor and some other state officials have maintained that protecting against the virus is a matter of personal responsibility.
Judge Lee Yeakel, who made the ruling in the suit filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, determined that the order from the governor violated the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act because it put children with disabilities at risk.
The ruling also prohibits Mr. Paxton from enforcing the order by Mr. Abbott, who has repeatedly opposed Covid-related mandates.
There are eight other states that have banned mask mandates—Florida, Arizona, Montana, Iowa, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Dakota.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Americans have relied on federal judges to guarantee that the democratic-formed rule of law prevails. While the case in the post is reassuring, fair court outcomes are seriously threatened by verdicts rendered today by the authoritarian ideologues from the right who are jurists at the local level (and, also by Leonard Leo’s federal appointees.)
The Don Winslow twitter feed about the Rittenhouse trial shows us what is happening in the trial of a teenager who anointed himself judge and jury after arriving in town brandishing a loaded gun.
The local judge presiding in the case who told the defense that it could refer to the men murdered as looters but, that the prosecution couldn’t call the murdered, victims, is a graduate of the only private law school in Wisconsin, a religious school. The judge when asked to rule on information regarding Rittenhouse and the Proud Boys, said, he had never heard of Proud Boys.
The prosecutor’s performance has been described by legal experts as indicative of a person who doesn’t want to win the case.
No justice in Kenosha.
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This reminds me of Trump’s assertions that if he lost the election, it would be because the election was rigged. On all sides, we undermine our faith in the nation’s most important institutions.
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“Faith” in Judge Bruce Schroeder might inch up if his rationale for excluding the video (“State Files two new motions in Rittenhouse case”, 8-19-2021, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) had a rationale that made sense.
False equivalency-
Tyrants inciting a mob to attack Pence on the false premise that thoroughly-vetted ballots didn’t reflect reality, is not an equivalent to a judicial proceeding that is blatantly contradictory to common rules of evidence and that shows deliberate preference for the defendant and his defenders.
If a Black man illegally had an AK 47 assault rifle, drove to another community and killed two men, few judges would treat him, the prosecutor and the defense as Schroeder has. If a Black man was on video stating his intent to kill, in an incident similar in circumstance, we can hope few judges would exclude it.
If a Black man was shown in pictures, (following the two murders he committed), posing with an acknowledged hate group who had a history of aggression, I’m pretty sure most judges would allow its admission.
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Linda, I totally agree.
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Flerp, I hope you aren’t saying that criticism of how the judge in Kenosha is conducting the trial undermines faith in an important institution.
What undermines faith in the nation’s most important institutions is when people condone and enable corrupt and improper behavior by invoking the false narrative that criticism of those who do wrong is the real problem.
What is dangerous is sitting silently complicit, or attacking critics by claiming that it is their criticism of inappropriate actions that undermines faith.
What an Orwellian comment.
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Linda, thanks for calling out the Orwellian false equivalency.
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Judge Schroeder reportedly offered an analogy to explain his perception that Rittenhouse’s posing with Proud Boys was irrelevant to the trial. Schroeder said that Pope Benedict had to join the Nazi Party.
My takeaway, the Judge believes White nationalist hate groups are harmless. But, those who oppose them are a threat, the least harmful of which is the possibility of their looting and rioting. Without the preceding interpretation, the Judge would be implying that Rittenhouse was forced to join Proud Boys, which is clearly absurd.
Judge Schroeder shouldn’t be on the bench. And, if Marquette Law School hasn’t initiated a program to address fairness based on race in its training of attorneys, the school should do so.
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https://www.theonion.com/critics-question-why-kyle-rittenhouse-singled-out-in-ky-1848040054
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NYC-
About the Onion article and Cecily Strong’s clown abortion segment on SNL-
acknowledging the reality of the right wing, it never gets easy.
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Linda,
That Rittenhouse trial is shocking.
The judge prevented the prosecution from expanding an image on an ipad. Why? Because the defense — which had submitted into evidence many expanded images themselves – objected that the prosecution did not have an expert witness to testify that blowing up images can’t be faked.
When the prosecution pointed out that the defense itself had already submitted numerous such blown-up images as evidence, do you know what the judge’s answer was?
The judge said something like “well you didn’t object when the defense submitted those images, so that’s your fault”.
It really is like a Soviet show trial and the normalization of it by some folks is astonishing.
By the way, anyone who listens to the defense would understand that their entire argument rests on the idea that a man running down the street waving an assault weapon after killing someone with it feels such an extreme danger from people trying to disarm him that he is justified in killing those people. It’s all about Kyle’s “feelings”.
I once heard of a guy who came in with a gun to rob a convenience store who tried to use as his defense that he “believed” that the store clerk who was reaching for a gun would try to kill him with that gun. It was self-defense, he said, because he felt in danger from the store clerk reaching for a gun because he believed that clerk would kill him if he didn’t kill the store clerk first.
It was laughed out of court.
Because the NYT reports everything with right wing framing, now this is considered a real defense!
Anyone who tries to disarm the guy running down the street waving his assault weapon because that guy has just sprayed bullets and shot people is allowed to be killed by the guy with the assault weapon as long as the guy with the assault weapon says that HE felt that having his assault weapon taken away after he sprayed bullets at people would put his own life in danger. That’s “self-defense”.
I think if the prosecution did an exact re-enaction of the footage except Kyle Rittenhouse was replaced by an African American teenager running through the streets with an assault weapon after spraying bullets at people, the jury would never decide that the African American teenager was justified in then gunning down all the people trying to disarm him because he had just sprayed bullets at people.
I doubt that’d say that as long as the African American teen perceived that the people trying to disarm him after he shot multiple bullets at people with his assault weapon were dangerous, the teen is justified in killing the people trying to disarm him, too.
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I’d bet serious money that a Black teenager who shot people, killing two, with an AK 47 that he illegally had in his possession and who lied to a reporter about being an EMT, would have difficulty raising the money for $2 mil. bail.
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I’d bet that mythical Black teenager would not have lived to face trial. We have libraries full of precedents.
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Greg-
We have Ahmaud Arbery as the contemporary evidence. He did what many White people did in going into the house that was under construction, framed, awaiting walls and siding. He stole nothing, unlike the two White boys who took a piece of plywood. Arbery was hunted down by 3 White men and murdered.
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The Guardian reports that Judge Schroeder’s ringtone is the theme song that often played when Trump entered rallies. It’s the Greenwood song popular in right wing circles.
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Judge Schroeder encouraged the courtroom including the jury to applaud a defense witness because he was a veteran.
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“The governor and some other state officials have maintained that protecting against the virus is a matter of personal responsibility.”
For those GOP MAGGOTS to be free to do as they please in public, the rest of us lose many of our freedoms if we don’t want to risk our health and lives.
To be safe, many cannot leave their homes, ever.
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How people behave at a concert where there is limited security is a matter of personal responsibility, and Houston found out the hard way how that works out.
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I suppose Governor Gregg Abbott would oppose any security regulations for concerts, even after the tragedy in Houston. As you said, it’s all a matter of personal responsibility. If you get trampled, it’s on you.
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