More School Districts in Texas Sue Governor Over Mask-Mandate Ban

Several states have banned mask requirements. In some of them, local officials are filing lawsuits against state governments for the authority to make those decisions for local schools.

A group of six districts, most of them in the Rio Grande Valley, filed suit Thursday against Gov. Greg Abbott, arguing that he doesn’t have the authority to stop them from requiring masks on their campuses. Kevin O’Hanlon, the attorney representing the group, said schools typically have authority to operate and issue regulations over their own facilities. The districts believe a lack of masks will harm in-person teaching and continuity, as rising infections cause absences and interruptions.

“It seems to me [that the governor] is trying to use a disaster declaration to prohibit anybody from responding to the disaster…which is odd,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott, a Republican, said dozens of previous challenges to his executive orders have been upheld in the end. On Wednesday, the governor and Attorney General

Ken Paxton

announced a state petition to the Fifth Court of Appeals requesting the court overturn a temporary restraining order against the governor’s order that had been granted in Dallas.

“The path forward relies on personal responsibility—not government mandates,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement. “The state of Texas will continue to vigorously fight the temporary restraining order to protect the rights and freedoms of all Texans.”

The suit filed Thursday, the first in the state filed by districts themselves, follows legal challenges to Mr. Abbott’s orders lodged by some of the state’s largest cities.

City and county leaders in San Antonio and Dallas have won temporary restraining orders blocking the enforcement of Mr. Abbott’s executive order. County health officials in both regions immediately followed the orders with directives requiring masks to be worn indoors at area public schools. Some school districts, including in Austin and Dallas, had announced mask requirements in defiance of Mr. Abbott’s order before the lawsuits.

Melissa Griffith, the mother of two elementary school-aged daughters in Richardson Independent School District, north of Dallas, joined the Dallas lawsuit because her youngest daughter, a 7-year-old incoming first-grader, is physically disabled and medically vulnerable, she said. The students who would be harmed most by catching Covid-19 are also the students who rely the most on services provided by in-person schooling, Ms. Griffith said.

“It’s not an equal value of education,” she said of virtual learning, which was suggested to her as an option. “When we’re talking about asking children to go through that, versus the alternative to put a mask on for the day, we don’t feel that it’s a lot to ask.”

Harris County, the nation’s third largest county, which includes Houston, sued Mr. Abbott and Mr. Paxton on Thursday, arguing the county has the authority to set health policies such as mask mandates. The Houston school district was set to consider a mask order later in the day, upon a recommendation from the superintendent.

In Arkansas, several school districts announced they would require masks, after a judge last week temporarily blocked enforcement of the state ban on such mandates. The state legislature met in a special session to consider altering their ban, at the urging of Republican

Gov. Asa Hutchinson,

but ultimately didn’t advance bills that would have allowed school districts to set their own rules.

Districts in other states that have banned mask requirements have also pushed back. In Arizona, the Phoenix Union High School district and other school districts have required masks despite a state law against such rules. A group of Republican lawmakers on Wednesday called for the state to withhold funds from districts that require masks.

In Florida, school districts in Broward, Orange and Miami-Dade counties are enacting mask requirements in opposition to an executive order prohibiting them. A spokeswoman for Republican

Gov. Ron DeSantis

on Monday said the state could withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who intentionally defy the order.

Write to Elizabeth Findell at Elizabeth.Findell@wsj.com and Ben Chapman at Ben.Chapman@wsj.com