Mask battles and back to school
As schools across the state struggled to craft safety guidelines amid a new surge of COVID-19 infections, many districts and city and county governments defied Gov. Greg Abbott’s order banning mask mandates by doing just that. Many counties, including Harris, Bexar and Dallas, have sued Abbott, calling his order an overreach; judges issued restraining orders for those counties. On Saturday, Texas Attorney Ken Paxton brought the case to the Texas Supreme Court, claiming that the governor’s disaster powers grant him authority to ban mask mandates.