Tag Archives: Texas

Texas House passes voting bill that lawmakers fled state to protest

By Julia Harte

(Reuters) -Texas’ House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill restricting voting access, more than six weeks after Democratic lawmakers fled the state in an effort to deny the legislature the quorum needed to approve the Republican-backed measure.

The House resumed business on Aug. 19 after three of the absentee Democrats returned to the statehouse, saying they had successfully brought national attention to the Texas bill and galvanized U.S. lawmakers to move forward on federal voting rights legislation.

Friday’s vote followed hours of fiery debate late into the night on Thursday, but its outcome was widely expected because the state legislature is dominated by a Republican majority.

The bill, passed on an 80-41 vote, will now proceed to the Texas Senate. It is widely expected to also pass there, clearing the way for Republican Governor Greg Abbott to sign it into law.

The Democratic lawmakers’ exodus on July 12 set up one of the most prolonged political showdowns over U.S. statehouse measures limiting voting access. Republicans have pushed the measures, citing former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that voter fraud cost him the November election.

The Texas bill would outlaw drive-through and 24-hour voting locations, add new identification requirements to mail-in voting, prevent election officials from sending out unsolicited mail-in ballot applications and empower partisan poll watchers.

Democratic lawmakers and voting rights advocates have warned that limiting flexible voting methods and other provisions of the bill would disproportionately hamper voters of color, a charge denied by its Republican backers.

House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, asked members to refrain from using the word “racism” during Thursday’s House floor debate, and rebuked Democratic Representative Gina Hinojosa when she asked whether intentional discrimination against people of a certain race was “racism.”

“I’m sorry that when we talk about discriminatory impact, it bothers people,” Democratic Representative Rafael Anchia said during the debate, citing federal court rulings that found other recent Texas voting legislation discriminatory.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to update existing federal voting safeguards, though it faces slim chances of passage in the Senate. Senate Democrats vow to push forward with the more expansive For the People Act that has stalled in that chamber.

(Reporting and writing by Julia Harte in New York; Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)

Florida, Texas schools defy governors’ bans on mask mandates as COVID cases soar

By Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) – School districts in Florida and Texas are bucking their Republican governors’ bans on requiring masks for children and teachers as coronavirus cases soar in conservative areas with low vaccination rates.

The Broward County school board in Florida on Tuesday became the latest major district to flout an order by Republican Governor Rick DeSantis outlawing mask requirements in that state. The Dallas Independent School District said late Monday that it would also require masks, despite an order banning such mandates from Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

The acts of rebellion by school officials come as these states — along with Louisiana, Arkansas and others — are flooded with new cases after people resisted vaccines and mask mandates. Teachers and administrators are seeking to protect students, many of whom are under 12 years old and cannot get vaccinated.

Fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant, U.S. cases and hospitalizations have soared to six-month highs with no flattening of the curve in sight.

Based on population, Florida, Louisiana and Arkansas are leading the nation with new cases and how many COVID patients fill their hospitals. Texas is not far behind.

In Arkansas, where only eight intensive care beds were available for COVID patients on Monday, Republican Governor Asa Hutchison said he regrets supporting a ban on mask mandates in his state.

In Florida, where nearly one out of every three hospital beds are occupied by a coronavirus patient, a surgeon in Orlando said hospitals in the area were “overflowing” with the unvaccinated.

“We need a field hospital. Please help us,” Sam Atallah, a surgeon at AdventHealth wrote on Twitter on Monday. “We are in a state of emergency in Orlando.”

In Dallas, where some staff had threatened to quit if masks were not mandated to protect children, teachers and others, school district officials said they did not believe the governor’s order should be applied to them. Schools in Austin also plan to require masks.

“Governor Abbott’s order does not limit the district’s rights as an employer and educational institution to establish reasonable and necessary safety rules for its staff and student,” the Dallas district said on its website.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s top executive, said late on Monday that he asked a district court to block Governor Greg Abbott’s July order that prevents local governments from implementing mask mandates.

“The enemy is not each other,” Jenkins said in a statement. “The enemy is the virus, and we must all do all that we can to protect public health.”

In Florida, where lawsuits have also been filed challenging the anti-mask order, DeSantis has threatened to withhold salaries from school district officials who flout his ban.

The threat prompted a response from the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, which is considering reimbursing school officials who lose their pay if DeSantis follows through on his threat.

“We’re continuing to look into what our options are to help protect and help support these teachers and administrators who are taking steps to protect the people in their communities,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday.

DeSantis stood by his statewide order banning mask mandates on Tuesday, saying it would allow parents to decide whether to mask their children for class.

“It’s about parental choice, not government mandate, and I think ultimately, parents will be able to exercise the choices that they deem appropriate for their kids,” DeSantis said at a briefing.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento; Additional reporting by Maria Caspani and Peter Szekely in New York and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Texas power demand expected to hit 2021 high during heatwave next week

(Reuters) – The Texas power grid operator on Friday forecast demand next week would reach its highest so far this year as homes and businesses crank up air conditioners to bring relief during another heatwave.

The United States has been beset by several extreme weather events this year, including February’s freeze in Texas that knocked out power to millions and record heat this summer in the Pacific Northwest.

High temperatures in Dallas were expected to reach the upper 90s Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) every day from Aug. 7-17, according to AccuWeather. The city’s normal high is 97 F at this time of year.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates most of the state’s grid, projected power use will reach 72,884 megawatts (MW) on Aug. 9, 73,472 MW on Aug. 11 and 73,628 MW on Aug. 12.

Those peaks would top this year’s current high of 72,856 MW on July 26, but would fall short of the grid’s all-time August 2019 high of 74,820 MW. One megawatt can power around 200 homes on a hot summer day.

The February freeze left millions of Texans without power, water and heat for days during a deadly storm as ERCOT scrambled to prevent an uncontrolled collapse of the grid after an unusually large amount of generation shut due to freezing natural gas pipes and wind turbines.

On-peak power at the ERCOT North hub, which includes Dallas, traded around $44.50 per megawatt hour (MWh) for Friday.

That is well below the average of $199 per MWh seen so far in 2021 due primarily to price spikes over $8,000 during the freeze, but is above 2020’s average of $26 and the five-year (2016-2020) average of $33.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

U.S. to outfit border agents with body cameras in major oversight move

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States will require thousands of border agents to wear body cameras, according to three officials and government documents, a major operational change that could increase oversight of agents and also help capture criminal activity.

The cameras are expected to be rolled out in parts of Texas and New Mexico during the summer and expanded in the fall and winter to Arizona, California, and Texas’ busy Rio Grande Valley, which all border Mexico, according to a recent government assessment of how the devices could impact privacy. Agents in Vermont along the U.S. border with Canada will also be equipped with cameras, the assessment said.

U.S. border authorities plan to deploy a total of 7,500 body-worn cameras, with 6,000 in the field by the end of the year, a border agency official told Reuters.

Pro-immigrant activists will likely welcome the increased oversight that cameras could bring to an agency some have criticized for excessive use of force and institutional racism. But a union for border patrol agents also supports cameras, saying they could assist criminal investigations and help show that agents act professionally.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have called on border patrol agents to use the cameras to improve accountability in the wake of several high-profile fatal shootings by law enforcement over the past decade.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, stressed that agents should have access to the footage, including when an agent is accused of wrongdoing.

Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), is the largest law enforcement agency in the United States, which presents a unique challenge for video footage collection and storage.

Recordings of illegal activity, use of force or agent misconduct could be used as evidence in investigations or prosecutions, the privacy assessment said.

The cameras could offer new insight into the policing of the southern border, where migrant arrests have risen to 20-year highs in recent months and encounters sometimes take place in remote areas.

In cases where footage could be used as evidence in a criminal case, it could be retained for up to 75 years, according to the privacy assessment. Footage that does not have value as evidence would be destroyed within 180 days.

After a bipartisan group of lawmakers spearheaded efforts to secure funding for bodycams, CBP awarded a total of about $21 million to Axon Enterprises Inc. for body cameras and to connect the cameras to a cloud-based storage system, according to the agency official.

The devices are the size of a deck of playing cards and will be affixed to the front of agents’ uniforms, the official said.

Axon declined to comment on the rollout.

CBP conducted a small pilot of body cameras in 2015, but ultimately opted not to deploy them then.

An agency assessment at the time said the cameras would likely reduce the use of physical force on the job, but cited a number of reasons not to adopt the devices, including cost and agent morale.

Gil Kerlikowske, who was CBP commissioner at the time, said another consideration was that the cameras “did not hold up particularly well” in the field, where they could be knocked off in the brush or mucked up with dust and dirt.

Body cameras have become more commonplace since the 2015 effort. The U.S. Department of Justice said in June that its agents would be required to wear cameras when serving search and arrest warrants.

Kerlikowske said many law enforcement officers support the idea, too.

“There are now police officers who won’t go on the street without their body camera,” he said. “They want that video image.”

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington, editing by Ross Colvin, Aurora Ellis, Mica Rosenberg and Diane Craft)

Texas power grid passes test, more to come as heat wave lingers

(Reuters) – The Texas power grid passed the first of what could be many tests over the next week by meeting very high demand on Monday without problems as homes and businesses cranked up their air conditioners to escape the latest heat wave.

The United States has been beset by extreme weather events this year, including February’s freeze in Texas that knocked out power to millions, and record heat in the Pacific Northwest earlier this summer.

High temperatures over the next week were expected to reach the mid 90s Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) in Houston and the low 100s in Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, according to AccuWeather.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the grid in most of the state, said power use hit a preliminary 72,856 megawatts (MW) on Monday and would reach 72,925 MW on July 30, 73,275 MW on Aug. 1 and 74,160 MW on Aug. 2.

Those peaks were lower than ERCOT forecast on Monday and would remain below July’s 74,244-MW record and the all-time high of 74,820 MW in August 2019. One megawatt can power around 200 homes in the summer.

Officials at ERCOT were not immediately available to say if Monday’s peak was the highest this year.

ERCOT has already broken monthly records, including 70,219 MW in June and 69,692 MW in February when millions of Texans were left without power, water and heat for days during a deadly storm as ERCOT scrambled to prevent an uncontrolled collapse of the grid after an unusually large amount of generation shut.

Despite Monday’s high demand, real-time prices remained below $100 per megawatt hour (MWh).

That compares with an average of $208/MWh at the ERCOT North so far in 2021 due primarily to price spikes over $8,000 during the February freeze. The 2020 average was just $26.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Abortion rights advocates sue Texas over 6-week abortion ban

By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) – Several abortion rights groups filed a federal lawsuit in Texas on Tuesday seeking to block a new state law banning abortion after six weeks and enabling individuals to sue anyone who assists a woman in getting an abortion past that point.

The lawsuit contends the Texas law violates a woman’s constitutional right to get an abortion before the fetus is viable and would cause “profound harm” to providers. It was filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, women’s health provider Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers and funds.

The law, signed on May 19 and due to take effect on Sept. 1, is one of nearly a dozen “heartbeat” abortion bans passed in Republican-led states. These laws seek to ban abortion once the rhythmic contracting of fetal cardiac tissue can be detected, often at six weeks – sometimes before a woman realizes she is pregnant.

Legal challenges have prevented these bans from taking effect. Judges have ruled that they violate Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark ruling that guaranteed a woman’s right to end her pregnancy before the fetus is viable, at around 24 weeks. Lawmakers who have voted for “heartbeat” measures have said they are intended to prompt the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The high court has opened the door to possibly overturning or narrowing Roe v. Wade, agreeing in May to review Mississippi’s bid to ban abortions after 15 weeks in its next session.

Unlike other state bans, the Texas measure leaves its enforcement largely to citizens, who can sue anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets” an abortion that violates provisions of the law, “including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise.”

Citizens who win such lawsuits would be entitled to at least $10,000, the law states.

The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday argues that abortion providers and staff could be forced to defend hundreds of “vigilante enforcement lawsuits” under the law and would consequently “accrue catastrophic financial liability” and “suffer profound harm to their property, business, reputations and a deprivation of their own constitutional rights.”

“If this oppressive law takes effect, it will decimate abortion access in Texas-and that’s exactly what it is designed to do,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.

The lawsuit targets state court judges, county clerks, the attorney general and state medical officials and asks that the federal court prevent those entities from enforcing the law or accepting citizen lawsuits.

“We’re confident in the innovative and carefully drafted nature of the Texas heartbeat act that it will be upheld and go into effect in September,” Texas Right to Life’s senior legislative associate Rebecca Parma said. The anti-abortion advocacy group’s East Chapter director is named as a defendant in the suit.

Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill and celebrated its passage in a video posted on Facebook.

“Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas we work to save those lives.” Abbott said.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by David Gregorio)

Promise vs practice: Police body-cam delays in Texas capital frustrate reformers

By Alexandra Ulmer and Julia Harte

AUSTIN, Texas – Advocates of police reform in Austin, Texas, cheered a year ago when the city agreed to release video from officers’ body cameras within 60 days of incidents in which they used force that caused serious injuries.

But since then, only a single body camera video has been released on time – in a non-fatal police shooting. Footage from three fatal police shootings was made public past the deadline. In at least 10 use-of-force incidents during Black Lives Matter protests last year, the department did not release any video.

Across the United States, where a complex thicket of laws stymies public access to body-camera footage, activists have urged law enforcement to release video to increase transparency and accountability in policing.

The effort gained greater urgency after high-profile cases of officers using force against people of color elevated concerns about racial bias, including the police murder of George Floyd. But enthusiasm for body-worn cameras, which about 80% of large U.S. police forces have, has been tested as their use has not guaranteed public access to footage.

That has been the case in Austin, the liberal capital of conservative Texas. An examination of how the city’s police department has put the promise of increased transparency into practice shows the limitations of body cameras as a solution to excessive force and unjust policing.

“It does make me question the whole edifice of body-worn cameras as an accountability or oversight tool,” said Chris Harris, director of the criminal justice project at Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit.

Two Austin police shootings just a day apart highlight the uneven success of the body-camera video release policy.

On Jan. 4, Dylan Polinski, who was 23 at the time, was shot by police in the leg after he barricaded himself in a hotel room with a hostage. He survived.

The next day, Alex Gonzales, 27, was shot by an off-duty officer after an alleged “road rage” incident and then shot again by an on-duty officer called as reinforcement. Gonzales, who was in a car with his girlfriend and baby, died.

Body-camera footage in Polinski’s case was released by the deadline. Gonzales’ family, which believes he was wrongfully killed and plans to sue the two officers and the city, expected the video from his shooting would be too.

AGONIZING WAIT

“We were counting down the days,” his sister Angel Gonzales, 21, said in the backyard of their home on the outskirts of Austin on a sweltering June afternoon. “And they kept delaying it last minute.”

During the family’s wait, police twice put out statements explaining the hold-ups, citing weather-related closures and investigative needs. His mother Liz Gonzales said it was upsetting to steel herself for the video of her son’s death ahead of each deadline, only to be confronted with delays.

The video was finally released in April, 113 days after the shooting. Prosecutors say they expect to present the case to a grand jury by early winter.

Joseph Chacon, Austin’s interim police chief, said there have been legitimate reasons for delays in releasing video, including insufficient resources for the time-intensive process of preparing the footage for public disclosure.

However, the policy enacted under his predecessor needs to be overhauled to achieve its goal of more transparency, said Chacon, who is seeking to be hired as the next chief.

“We put a policy out there and said: ‘We’re going to do it within 60 days.’ They have an expectation and when we fail to meet that expectation, that erodes that trust,” Chacon said in an interview.

The proliferation of police body cameras nationwide reflects the growing view that citizens have a right to scrutinize how officers perform in the field, though police largely see the cameras as evidence-gathering tools.

Additionally, some activists believe officers are less likely to discriminate or use excessive force when they are recorded. Research to confirm this has produced mixed results.

But experts agree that if video is recorded, slow or inconsistent release of the footage stokes public mistrust and reinforces perceptions that police want to hide officer misconduct.

CHANGE AHEAD

Chacon said the department can only prepare footage from one case at a time and had to prioritize Polinski’s shooting because it happened first. He wants to reduce processing time by no longer editing videos and instead release near-raw footage.

Rebecca Webber, a civil rights lawyer who has criticized the Austin Police Department’s delays, welcomed Chacon’s proposal.

“It’s the obvious solution. I am 100% in favor,” she said.

Other cities in Texas have adopted shorter footage release timelines for critical incidents. Dallas says it does so within 72 hours, while Houston takes up to 30 days.

Police in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center were commended in April for releasing body-cam footage from the officer shooting death of Daunte Wright, a Black man, within 24 hours.

But in other places, body-cam video has been released years after an event — or never. In the New York police killing of Kawaski Trawick in April 2019, the Bronx district attorney released the footage 18 months later.

When demonstrators were injured during racial justice protests in Austin last year, the city’s police department said it would not release videos until the district attorney decided whether to present the cases to a grand jury.

After Reuters’ questions about the delay, the DA’s office – where a new chief, Jose Garza, was elected in November – said it no longer objected to releasing footage. Among Garza’s campaign pledges was to hold police officers accountable for misconduct.

Sam Kirsch, 27, is eager to view the video. He believes severe damage to his left eye during a May 2020 protest was caused by a police projectile, and he has sued both police and the city.

The DA’s office is investigating. In court filings, the officer said he was performing within his scope of duty.

“If I were able to see the footage of me, and hear what may have been said, I could know if I was targeted,” Kirsch said. “If I knew for a fact that I was not intentionally targeted, I could feel a little bit safer living in Austin.”

(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer in Austin and Julia Harte in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Cynthia Osterman)

Texas, California call for power restraint during heatwave

(Reuters) -Texas and California urged consumers to conserve energy this week to reduce stress on the grid and avoid outages as homes and businesses crank up air conditioners to escape a scorching heatwave blanketing the U.S. Southwest.

High temperatures were expected to top 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) through the weekend in parts of several states including California, Arizona and Nevada.

“The public’s help is essential when extreme weather or other factors beyond our control put undue stress on the electric grid,” said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive of the California ISO, which operates the grid in most of California.

Over the past year, Texas and California imposed rotating or controlled outages to prevent more widespread collapses of their power systems – California during a heatwave in August 2020 and Texas during a brutal freeze in February 2021.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s grid operator, expects Thursday’s demand to break the June record set on Monday. In February, ERCOT imposed rotating outages as extreme cold froze natural gas pipes and wind turbines, leaving millions of customers without power – some for days.

ERCOT has been under fire for the design of its system, which is not connected to other U.S. grids to avoid federal oversight, and because they do not operate a “capacity” market that keeps power generation on stand-by during extreme weather events.

The California ISO said its Flex Alert, or call for conservation, “is critical because when temperatures hit triple digits across a wide geographic area, no state has enough energy to meet all the heightened demand.”

The ISO said evening is the most difficult time of day because demand remains high but solar energy diminishes. So far this year, solar has provided 22% of the grid’s power.

Real-time prices in ERCOT have remained below $100 per megawatt hour (MWh) since Tuesday evening as more power plants returned to service from forced outages that caused prices to soar over $1,900 for two 15-minute periods on Monday.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Edmund Blair)

COVID-19 mask mandates latest flashpoint for U.S. schools

By Sharon Bernstein and Colleen Jenkins

(Reuters) – Two days after the school board in Johnston, Iowa, decided last week to keep requiring mask wearing in schools to prevent coronavirus transmission, the state’s Republican governor signed a law that immediately prohibited such mandates.

The reaction in Johnston was swift and sharply divided, with some parents applauding the move to make masks optional for the waning days of the school year and others calling it dangerous given the continued threat from COVID-19.

“I just find it super disappointing and selfish,” said local parent Sara Parris, who is still sending her two sons to class with face coverings.

The debate over masks in schools is yet another flashpoint for U.S. educators grappling with how to keep students and staff safe during the pandemic. Friction around returning to in-person learning has given way to heated disagreements over whether masks should be shed for good.

Iowa and Texas have banned school districts from requiring kids to wear masks on campus. Similar moves are under consideration in other states and local jurisdictions, spurred in part by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) saying on May 13 that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks in most situations.

With children under age 12 not yet eligible for vaccinations, however, the CDC recommends face coverings in educational settings at least through the end of the school year. While children are less likely to suffer severe COVID-19, they are not without risk and can readily transmit the virus.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said on Twitter that her state was “putting parents back in control of their child’s education and protecting the rights of all Iowans to make their own health care decisions.”

Responding to the governor via Twitter, Democratic state Senator Sarah Trone Garriott said: “I’m hearing from lots of parents reporting that their children are being bullied for wearing a mask. Are you going to stand up for their personal choice?”

At the Johnston school board meeting last week, most parents spoke in favor of making masks optional, with one mother calling masking requirements for children abusive. Other parents emailed school officials asking for mask mandates to remain in place.

“It’s been difficult to try to find the right balance,” Justin Allen, president of the school board and a parent of two high school students, said in an interview.

“Just when you think you are in kind of a comfort zone and you think you can focus on education for awhile, something else emerges and you have another controversial issue to address.”

CDC STUDY BACKS MASKS

In North Carolina, parents opposed to mandatory face coverings staged a protest in Wake County after Democratic Governor Roy Cooper lifted mask requirements in some situations but not in schools.

“Parents should determine if their child should wear a mask, not school systems or the governor,” parent Nazach Snapp wrote in a letter to the Wake County school board.

Others urged the board to continue its mask requirement.

“Given that vaccines are not available yet for children under 12, I implore you to continue to require students in middle and elementary settings to wear masks,” wrote parent Mimosa Hines.

A study published by the CDC on Friday showed that in elementary schools that required masks, transmission of COVID-19 was lower by 37% than in schools where masks were optional. The study, which included 169 elementary schools in Georgia that were open for in-person instruction, also showed improved ventilation slowed virus transmission.

It advised increasing, not decreasing, the use of masks and ventilation in schools.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association, two unions that represent a total of about 5 million teachers and staff, have urged states to keep their mask requirements at least through the end of this school year.

While nearly 90% of AFT’s members have been vaccinated against COVID-19, many of their students have not.

U.S. regulators earlier this month authorized use of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE for children ages 12 to 15. It is still being tested for use in younger children.

AFT President Randi Weingarten said Texas and Iowa “jumped the gun” in removing their mask requirements. Politics around masks, along with unclear guidance from the CDC, have left teachers in an awkward position, she said.

“Teachers don’t want to become the mask police,” she said. “It’s time to let us actually teach.”

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California and Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Iowa joins U.S. states forbidding COVID-19 mask mandates in schools

(Reuters) – Iowa joined a handful of other U.S. states on Thursday in passing a law that forbids cities, counties and local school districts from requiring people to wear face masks that protect against the spread of the coronavirus.

Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, signed the measure into law just hours after it was approved by the state legislature. Texas and Florida, which also have Republican governors, have passed similar measures.

“The state of Iowa is putting parents back in control of their child’s education and taking greater steps to protect the rights of all Iowans to make their own healthcare decisions,” Reynolds said in a statement.

A week ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said people vaccinated against COVID-19 no longer need to wear a mask in most settings because the chance of them catching or transmitting the airborne coronavirus is so low. But it still advised face coverings be worn in schools, medical settings and public transit.

The decision by Texas, Florida and Iowa to ignore some of the guidance comes after a year in which many conservative political leaders have cast mask mandates as an erosion of individual liberty rather than a public health issue.

Some Democrat-led states, such as New York and Connecticut, have adopted the CDC advice and said vaccinated people are no longer bound by mask mandates, though unvaccinated people must still wear them if they cannot distance themselves from others. Those states also have not stopped individual businesses from requiring visitors to wear masks.

In his Tuesday executive order, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said schools must scrap any mask requirements by June 4. However, public hospitals and state jails may still impose mask requirements, the order said.

On Wednesday, the Utah legislature passed a bill forbidding public schools and state universities from requiring masks, which now heads to the governor to be signed into law.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)