Texas Gov. Abbott Bans COVID Vaccine Mandates Across the Board
“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, & our best defense against the virus, but should always remain voluntary & never forced.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott banned public and private entities from enforcing a COVID vaccine mandate. The state recently allowed private businesses to choose if employees should get the vaccine.
Abbott’s Executive Order GA-40 states:
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. I hereby suspend all relevant statutes to the extent necessary to enforce this prohibition.
The maximum fine allowed under Section 4 1 8. 173 of the Texas Government Code and the State’s emergency management plan shall apply to any “failure to comply with” this executive order. Confinement in jail is not an available penalty for violating this executive order.
This executive order shall supersede any conflicting order issued by local officials in response to the COVID-19 disaster. Pursuant to Section 418.016(a) of the Texas Government Code, I hereby suspend Sections 418.1015(b) and 418.108 of the Texas Government Code, Chapter 8 1, Subchapter E of the Texas Health and Safety Code, and any other relevant statutes, to the extent necessary to ensure that local officials do not impose restrictions in response to the COVID-19 disaster that are inconsistent with this executive order.
I issued an Executive Order prohibiting vaccine mandates by ANY entity in Texas.
I also added the issue to the Special Session agenda.
The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, & our best defense against the virus, but should always remain voluntary & never forced. pic.twitter.com/8hHHLyebCk
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) October 11, 2021
It appears Abbott made the decision after Biden demanded private businesses with more than 100 people to mandate vaccines and require the vaccine for federal employees.
“WHEREAS, in yet another instance of federal overreach, the Biden Administration is now bullying many private entities into imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, causing workforce disruptions that threaten Texas’s continued recovery from the COVID-19 disaster,” wrote Abbott.
American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, based in Texas, require all employees to get the vaccine.
Texas banned vaccine passports. Abbott has resisted calls to reissue a mask mandate. He banned local governments and schools from issuing mask and vaccine mandates.
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Comments
The political process worked here as it appears one of his Primary opponents pushed this action. I am thankful for a right move even if it politically based rather than ethically based.
How will this impact SOUTHWEST AIRLINES? How will this impact Federal Employees in Texas? The Governor distinctly said ‘No entity in Texas’. He has thrown down the gauntlet to the Feds.
Southwest will be the first test of this. I’m not going to put money on vigorous enforcement and harsh penalties though
Obviously it doesn’t affect federal employees at federal facilities, but even they aren’t consistent. I still have to mask up to pick up my prescriptions at a military pharmacy, but I don’t when I visit the BX or Class VI (at least at Randolph AFB). To date nobody asks about the jab.
SWA is a different situation, since flights that take off from DFW et al more than likely are going to land in another state with different rules. I don’t know how they’re going to solve that one unless they carry extra pilots, and right now they don’t have enough jabbed ones to fill their cockpits. Maybe confine the unjabbed to intrastate flights only. What I don’t want to see is more pilots dying in mid-flight, as just happened with Delta.
What I don’t want to see is more pilots dying in mid-flight, as just happened with Delta.
That will be brushed under the rug. No relation to the vaccine, nothing to see here.
He has thrown down the gauntlet to the Feds
If I recall correctly the OSHA mandate isn’t actually in force yet. What’s happening is big companies like mine preemptively following it.
thank you, greg
Can he do that?! More to the point, how is it right for him to do that? How is forcing someone to employ or deal with people whom he doesn’t want to better than forcing him not to employ or deal with people whom he does want to? Surely both violate the exact same principle, in the same way.
If you believe in choice then you have to believe in choice, including some people’s choice to deal only with vaccinated people, because that’s what makes them (and/or their customers) feel safe.
It’s like guns. Everyone has the right to carry, but everyone also has the right not to allow others to carry in their private premises.
The federal government no longer complies with the Constitution, the U.S.C, or ethical standards (i.e., Nuremberg Code). Do you think your team would win a football game where you followed the rules and the other team did not?
Billy Jack – “When policemen break the law, then there isn’t any law – just a fight for survival.”
What’s that got to do with it? How does the federal government violating someone’s freedom justify the state government doing the exact same thing? That’s like saying BLM beats people up and loots stores, so I can beat people up and loot stores too.
What if we beat up people who beat up people?
If you’re doing it in order to prevent them from beating people up, then it’s legitimate defense of self and others. If you do it later as revenge, or to punish them, then you’re just as guilty as they are.
But what the hell has that got to do with the topic? The private entities whose freedom Abbott has just trampled on are not harming anyone. How does the federal government’s trampling on some people’s liberty justify Abbot doing the same thing to other people?
“How does the federal government violating someone’s freedom justify the state government doing the exact same thing?”
False premise. Texas is protecting individual freedom. Do not laws currently force employers to not discriminate by forcing them “… to employ or deal with people whom he does want to?” Ethics exists outside of the law. It is a moral code. The Nazis had laws (The Nuremberg Laws) that I am sure you would not suggest obedience to.
Do not laws currently force employers to not discriminate by forcing them “… to employ or deal with people whom he does want to?”
Those laws are also unconstitutional. Milhouse, as usual, is correct on the law; you just don’t like that he’s correct.
And while I happen to agree with Milhouse’ interpretation, on the “too late to work within the system, too early to just shoot the bastards” spectrum, I feel Western society is rather closer to the latter than the former and that makes these kinds of legal arguments increasingly academic.
No, it is not. It is trampling individual freedom exactly like the federal government.
No, they do not (with a few limited exceptions, such as race, sex, religion, disability, and age over 40).
Not only is it wrong to add to those exceptions, but vaccination status is entirely unlike those exceptions, both because those are all things that nobody has any valid reason to use as a basis for discrimination, and because those are things a person cannot (or cannot readily) change. Neither of these apply to vaccination status.
Indeed, and Abbott is now violating the very same moral code he claims to be upholding. Clearly he does not believe in individual choice after all.
Daniel, I don’t believe those laws are unconstitutional. I do believe they’re morally wrong. But regardless of that, Abbott’s action shows that he doesn’t believe in the very principle he claims to be championing.
The Governor is protecting Texans who don’t want to be forced to get the shot.
That is why it is different.
That’s no difference at all. What makes those people more worthy of protection than Texans who don’t want to be forced to employ unvaccinated people?
You have the right to choose not to be vaccinated. You do not have the right to be employed by people who are worried that your choice endangers them, their other employees, and/or their customers. Their concern is no less legitimate than whatever concerns you have about the vaccine. In both cases it’s a matter of personal choice. Make your choice and accept that others may choose differently.
Texas is a right to work state. You can fire anybody for no reason. BUT if you have a reason, it better be a legal one. Failure to get a COVID vaccine is not going to be one of those legal reasons soon.
And that is the same violation of personal choice as Biden’s proposed (but not yet enacted) requirement for employer mandates.
The State is protecting the people’s freedoms from the fascists in the pedophile’s administration.
The people victimized by a vaccine mandate are deprived of choices that those imposing the mandates retain. While it’s a tricky balance to strike (and most courts fail when they try) a faulty attempt to strike that balance is better than none.
You mean like firing people with AIDs?
AIDS is a disability, and there is no substantial burden on you if you can’t fire someone for it. Not being vaccinated is not a disability, and there is a substantial burden in not being able to fire people for it.
The ADA is one of the two reasons I didn’t vote for Bob Dole, and didn’t care whether he won or lost. But like it or not it is the law, until it can be repealed, for which there is currently no support. Not even on this site.
The ADA applies here. Discrimination based on medical condition (not vaccinated/potentially subject to contracting a disease) is illegal. Just substitute HIV/AIDS for SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, and the point becomes immediately apparent. The ADA was revised during the AIDS “epidemic” in the 1980s specifically to address such discrimination and make it illegal.
Concerning your last paragraph, yes, the practice is allowed, but it is offensive to a natural right. Two objections come to mind immediately. First, because businesses are not “private,” they’re state-licensed entities, granted licenses to serve all of the people in a community, including those who exercise their right to bear arms. (In the exercise of their business licenses, businesses are not otherwise permitted to deny access or service to people because they exercise any other right that can be exercised non-disruptively when on the business premises, and concealed carry is non-disruptive. Discrimination against the unvaccinated would be aimed at people who are exercising their right to bodily autonomy, which has never before been considered disruptive, and against which other citizens can take any measures they care to take to protect themselves, including vaccination, masking, and staying home.) Second, businesses are usually authorized to discriminate against people bearing arms (unlawfully, IMHO) by statutes that allow them to do so. (There is much more to say about this, but I have kept this bare-bones version of the argument brief.) Abbott is not allowing such discrimination with respect to the unvaccinated.
If “no guns” is valid, why isn’t “no Muslims”? Certainly, some people find Muslims disturbing because they believe them dangerous. But not all Muslims are dangerous! Neither is everyone carrying a gun. Nor is every unmasked or unvaccinated person. Licensed entities can be directed by government concerning who they will, and who they may not, serve. There are no longer any “whites only” concerns, no more “colored entrances”, and no signs against the entry to Italians or Irish. Government has been issuing anti-discrimination directives to “private” businesses for many decades.
That’s bullshit.
1. Not being vaccinated is not a disability. It’s a choice. The ADA does not protect choices.
1a. Even if you could call it a disability, it’s easily corrected, and the ADA does not protect disabilities that can be easily corrected, such as shortsightedness. If an employee who needs glasses refuses to wear them, his employer is not required to accommodate this choice.
2. Businesses are 100% private. Every person has the inalienable right to engage in business, and it is protected, if by nothing else, then by the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th amendment. The idea that you would need the government’s permission merely to conduct a business is just as offensive as the idea that you would need the government’s permission to be employed by someone else. I am shocked that anyone posting on LI, anyone pretending to be a conservative, would make such a claim. You, DaveGinOly, are a socialist, posting here under false pretenses.
(Now the use of “business licenses” as a form of taxation is another matter, so long as the “license” is issued as of right to anyone who pays the tax. So is the licensing of certain skilled trades and professions, so long as the government can demonstrate that its licensing criteria are both objective and no stricter than public safety demands, and not being used as a form of protection for those already in the sector.)
Since when? Where did you come up with this ludicrous idea? Businesses are entitled to deny access or service to anyone for any reason, except those specifically prohibited by law. And every such prohibition needs to be justified. Abbott is imposing a new such prohibition, which he cannot justify except by denying the very principle he’s citing as his justification.
For one thing, because religion is an innate characteristic that a person can’t change on demand. A person can’t choose to believe other than the way he does in fact believe. He can pretend to, but he will still have the same beliefs.
That’s the reason why the law is as it is. But the legal distinction is very simple: “No Moslems”, or “no whites”, are illegal only because Congress said so. And it’s got nothing to do with licenses; the law applies exactly the same to unlicensed businesses as to licensed ones.
Typical Milhouse, put logic back to him and it’s “bullshit”. What a loon.
Typical RickP, supporting socialism.
If you need government permission to run a business, then you also need government permission to shop at a business. If you need it to employ people then you also need it to be employed. You can’t have it only one way. Either we belong to the state or to ourselves.
Same old Milhouse.
If you don’t want to carry a gun but I do, no one is making you do it. If I don’t want a jab of vaccine that has potential life threatening effects and you do, go right ahead.
Same old RIckP the damned liar. How dare you claim that I have ever denied your right not to carry a gun, or not to be vaccinated? But you are claiming the right to choose belongs only to you and not to anyone else. You are claiming that you have the right to choose to carry a gun but the property owner has no right to choose not to allow your gun on his premises. You are claiming that you have the right to refuse the vaccine, but the property owner has no right to choose to refuse you entry. That’s not freedom, it’s dictatorship.
It was good of the Governor to twist Southwest’s arm. I hope they say “Thank you.”
While I understand the Governor’s desire to limit the topics in this order, I submit that there is abundant evidence that the COVID vaccines currently being distributed in the US are neither effective nor safe.
The VAERS data base has been throwing off danger signals for months. It shows tens of thousands of DEATHS related to these experimental drugs.
This is not in keeping with the US standard of safety, which is LESS than 1 severe adverse event (not necessarily death) per million vaccines.
The VAERS database suggests hundreds of thousands of severe adverse events per million, including lasting vaccine injuries, pericarditis, myocarditis, prolonged failure to thrive based on other injuries.
The CDC has been playing games with the statistics, and is still unable to bring them in line with anything remotely resembling an acceptable vaccine campaign. Meanwhile, the CDC has utterly failed to report on the forensic autopsies it should be collecting, to show what is going wrong with these vaccines.
Pfizer is trying to push this vaccine on younger and younger members of our population, despite the utter lack of demonstrated benefit to them. The risk of vaccine injury to children is higher than the risk posed by the virus.
This is not 2019. Our clinicians have devised effective, incredibly cheap, early outpatient treatments for this disease, which our various government entities have failed to acknowledge. These treatments are being actively suppressed by some of our State governments and various hospitals.
Our vaccine policy in this country is stuck in 2019 and is irrational.
agree your perspective viz vaccine safety–however, he was courageous enough to say “no entity in texas” which would presume to include school districts, school boards, etc. and not limited to businesses(public/private)only–clearly intended to affirm individual choice regards vaccination as it should be
well done and long overdue
Except the individual choices of those who don’t want to have unvaccinated people on their premises.
Freedom of contract has been dead since at least 1964. Private businesses on private property became “public accommodation”. Entities may no longer set standards of admission or employment others don’t like.
Under what basis would we exclude those unvax? Safety? No, not really. The folks who have taken the jab are supposed to be protected from severe outcomes. To suggest that the vax should be fearful of those unvax undermines the rationale for the vax itself.
How does natural immunity factor into the debate? Large scale studies show that natural immunity is more robust and longer lasting than any vax. Without providing any outlet for those with natural immunity to at least show that immunity and it to be recognized as a legitimate alternative seems not only unscientific but punitive.
What to do for exemptions? There are folks who can’t get the vax for well recognized medical reasons. What about those who seek exemption for reasons of conscience? Of course the reason many are practically eliminating options for exemptions is that it would result in unvax in the workplace which would undermine their wish for 100% compliance.
Finally what is fully vax? Is it booster or no booster? The efficacy of the vax severely wanes at 6 months. Lots of vax folks are asymptomatic spreaders and in some areas are an increasing percentage of those hospitalised.
As a libertarian by inclination I would be happy to grant the business owner complete autonomy over the selection of his employees and his customers. He could fire whom he chooses and grant or refuse service to anyone for any reason without legal recourse or govt interference. Since we don’t have that system I don’t see why business owners should have that right with the issue of Covid.
Who is this “we”? “We” are not excluding the unvaccinated from anything. Individuals are doing so, and the only basis they need is the exact same basis on which other individuals choose not to be vaccinated. One person feels safer without the vaccine than with it, and another person feels safer without the first person’s presence on his premises than with it. There is nothing to say which one of them is more rational; more to the point it doesn’t matter which is more rational because there’s no requirement to be rational. You are defending a person’s right to be unvaccinated even if that is not a rational decision for him. I agree with you; but the other person has the same right not to employ the first one, even if that is not a rational decision.
The issue isn’t individual decisions in isolation but rather decisions influenced via govt dictates regarding public health. The policies themselves need a rational basis in supporting public health to be lawful. OSHA couldn’t simply say employers must require 25 push ups each morning to fight Covid. That isn’t related to Civic spread.
The vax simply mitigates severe outcomes. It doesn’t render people immune nor does it eliminate asymptomatic spread from those who were vaxed. The efficacy of the vax declines significantly at the 6 month mark. Thus the booster. Natural immunity is being ignored.
The mandate from OSHA is only now going to draft review. There isn’t any final implementation rule yet. Nor is the vax which was fully authorized available. The current vax available in the US are all distributed under EUA, they are experimental.
I realize you know all this but I put it in for others who may not. To return to the discussion, I would much prefer a live and let live climate v one in which irrational fear is relied upon as the basis for denying service or firing employees.
IMO this is a dangerous path and once we allow this there isn’t a limiting principle of restraint.
or those who are the wrong color and wrong religion too?? right??
Of course I disagree.
Remember that all local governments are subdivisions of the state government. The states created the federal government. The state is the primary level of government in our system.
VAERS is junk, and means absolutely nothing. It’s worse than Wikipedia, because not only can anyone report anything, but there’s also no method of correcting false reports. At least on Wikipedia there are people constantly repairing vandalism, so on non-controversial topics you can generally rely on what you read there, if it seems plausible and it’s been there undisturbed for a significant time (check the history). With VAERS you don’t even have that.
So VAERS has been OK for decades so long as there were no strong signals that any given vaccine was dangerous, but suddenly it’s “junk” because its giving the strong signal it was designed to display in case something goes very wrong?
The data may be junk. The data doesn’t indicate causality. But VAERS was designed to give warning signals, and those signals were meant to be acted upon by investigation. The CDC seems to be uninterested in investigating the signals.
A study of previous VAERS data estimated that only 1% of minor adverse effects are reported, and only 10% of deaths. Even if current VAERS data is off by an order of magnitude, the number of deaths being indicated by the system could be accurate. (Correct for the “off by an order of magnitude” by reducing the number of reported deaths to one-tenth of the number. Then multiply the resulting number by 10, to account for deaths not reported, and the result equals the number of reported deaths.)
No, VAERS has been junk since it was launched. What made you think otherwise? What reasonable person has ever paid any attention to it? Its sole purpose is to give cranks an outlet for venting.
Funny that none of you ever bothered to say that until it started showing what crap MRNA vaccines really are, isn’t it?
What the actual fuck? Who is this “you” that you think I’m part of? Where did you get the idea that I, or anyone associated with me, never bothered to say what crap VAERS is? I know: you didn’t get that idea and don’t actually believe it now, you’re just saying it because it helps you attack me out of pure hatred. You don’t care whether what you say is true or false. You don’t even believe there’s such a thing as truth or falsity. You’re a typical leftist. Go to Hell.
Increasingly “…abundant evidence that the COVID vaccines currently being distributed in the US are neither effective nor safe.”
I will call Abbott’s office and thank him for the EO. However, I will also bring up your point. He attempts to drive centered on the yellow line on the highway where only armadillos should navigate.
The VAERS database suggests hundreds of thousands of severe adverse events per million
And those are just today’s events. About 2/3 of those myocarditis/pericarditis cases, whether reported in VAERS or not, are going to die in 5 years or less. All of those deaths should be reported as adverse vaccine events, but I bet very few of them will be. I’m also willing to bet that a bunch of heart inflammation and heart attack cases in the middle aged and elderly are really vaccine events, but they’re being deliberately written off as pre-existing conditions to create the illusion that this side effect only affects the young.
Waiting to see SWA rescinded their vaccine requirement due to Abbot and not have to cancel anymore flights.
What kind of weather only affects one airline?
Stormy sickout?
Good on Governor Abbot!
Perhaps the governor is attempting to prevent what is happening in Lithuania.
I have no way to vet this article, but perhaps someone here has better resources than I do currently.
https://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/modern-day-censorship/how-recent-vaccine-mandate-laws-in-lithuania-and-throughout-europe-have-upended-my-familys-life/
No, it is not. It is trampling individual freedom exactly like the federal government.
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bullshit
“no entity in texas can compel…..”–clear and unambiguous as hell and intuitive enough to pay lip service to vaccines working (whether he believes it or not)thereby preempting all the pearl-wringing karens from steering the issue towards disputing the vaccine’s viability and instead focusing on the right of the individual to decide on vaccination
well done–clear and focused
I like Governor Abbott, but I don’t view this as a conservative position. If a private business wants to have a vaccine mandate, that’s their business. Banning mandates just makes him look like an anti-vaxxer
Clearly he isn’t an antivaxxer, after all he repeated the false claim that the vax is safe and effective when we have no data to support that.
Waiting for DeSantis to follow suit. Unfortunately I don’t believe he will.
Of course he won’t, he’s not stupid. Abbott is about to be eaten alive, and rightly so. What is it that you are missing here?
There are some iinteresting procedural questions here.
Abbot has signed an Executive Order banning imposing as vaccine mandate. Someone who wants to file a lawsuit challenging this can point to an actual governmental act–the issuance of the Executive Order.
Biden has signed two Executive Orders which apply to federal government employees–and to contractors with the federal government. But the contractor executive order only applies to contracts entered into after October 15–so far it has no practical effect. There’s nothing to sue about.
And then Scranton Joe weaseled out–he said he wanted all employers with more than 100 employees to require vaccines—but that was talk. No executive order–no real thing to “sue”. Supposedly the Department of Labor or OSHA would issue a regulation requiring such–although there is some real question as to whether either of those entities can do that in a legal fashion. And guess what–six weeks later, neither one has done anything.
So when Southwest and American Airlines–and the progressives who support mandatory vaccine–say that they are simply following the federal law–just what law or regulation are they following? None has come out yet.
Old Shufflin Senescent Slow Joe is merely jawboning–and the CEOs who want to keep getting invited to the right cocktail parties are saying “Yessuh Boss–we’ll get right on it.” Meantime anybody who wants to challenge the nonexistent federal “law” can’t find it..
Yes, exactly. There is no federal law or regulation requiring vaccine mandates. Businesses that have imposed one must take responsibility themselves, and either own it or change their policies. They can’t blame it on the possibility that one day in the future there might be an executive order or OSHA rule, which might be upheld in court; let them wait for that to happen.