Governors, Local Officials in Mask Mandate Tug-of-War 

Two school districts in Texas are defying an order issued by Governor Greg Abbott that prohibits local governments from issuing face mask mandates as the southwestern U.S. state faces a dramatic surge of new COVID-19 infections. 

Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, announced Monday that all students and teachers should wear face masks. The move comes just days after the superintendent of Houston’s public schools, the state’s largest school district, announced that he would ask the district’s trustee board to approve a similar mandate.  The head of Dallas County’s governing board of commissioners, Judge Clay Jenkins,  has filed a lawsuit against Abbott’s executive order. The nonprofit South Center for Child Advocacy has also filed a lawsuit in Travis County, whose county seat, Austin, is also the state’s capital city, seeking a temporary restraining order against the governor’s order.  Amid the growing opposition to his order, Abbott on Monday called for hospitals across the state to voluntarily delay all elective, or non-emergency, surgeries and medical procedures to focus all of their efforts on treating the increasing number of COVID-19 patients. Many hospitals have either reached or exceeded patient capacity, with two major hospitals in Houston erecting tents to handle the overflow of coronavirus patients.