Free Republic

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order prohibiting mask mandates in schools violates the Americans with Disabilities Act — freeing local officials to again create their own rules. The order comes after a months long legal dispute between parents, a disability rights organization and Texas officials over whether the state was violating the 1990 law, known as the ADA, by not allowing school districts to require masks. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel barred Attorney General Ken Paxton from enforcing Abbott’s order. “The spread of COVID-19 poses an even greater risk for children with special health needs,”...

State has 14 days to ask full 5th Circuit to hear caseTexas Right to Life responded yesterday to the 2-1 decision: The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against the Texas Dismemberment Abortion Ban, upholding the district court ruling that blocked enforcement of the Pro-Life law. After a three-year wait, the decision by the three-judge panel is disappointing and demonstrates the need for judges who follow the strictest interpretation of the Constitution. However, Texas must continue the legal battle to force a federal circuit court split, pressuring the Supreme Court of the United States to evaluate...

The state of Texas is not going to just roll over and allow a federal judge to authorize Texas abortion clinics to keep killing babies in abortions instead of obeying the governor’s order to halt non-essential medical procedures. The order helps support hospitals and medical clinics that need additional medical gear and supplies to treat patients with the coronavirus. As LifeNews.com reported yesterday, a federal judge in Texas with a long history of siding with abortion advocates ruled today that Texas abortion centers can defy the governor’s order to stop non-essential medical procedures instead of helping coronavirus patients by conserving...

Texas will again be allowed to implement its temporary ban on abortion, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday afternoon. Per the order, any abortion "not medically necessary to preserve the life or health" of the patient must be halted as part of the state's directive suspending "non-essential" medical procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic. The ban was briefly lifted on Monday evening when a lower court ruled the suspension of abortion services was unconstitutional and in violation of Supreme Court precedent, including Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. "I thank the court for their immediate...

Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion corporation, will be allowed to continue committing abortions in Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic. CBS News reporter Kate Smith broke the news on Twitter, announcing that a federal judge granted Planned Parenthood and the Center of Reproductive Rights a temporary restraining order against Attorney General Ken Paxton’s order for all abortions to be banned. Calling abortions non-essential services during the coronavirus pandemic, any abortion that was considered not medically necessary for the life or health of the mother was not allowed, with abortionists who violated the order facing a $1,000 fine or 180 days...

AUSTIN, Texas (CBSDFW.COM/CBS NEWS) – A federal judge halted Texas’s temporary ban on abortion on Monday afternoon, allowing the procedure to resume despite the state’s suspension of “non-essential” procedures, which explicitly included pregnancy termination. Judge Lee Yeakel wrote in the nine-page court filing that Texas’s directive to ban the procedure would cause patients to “suffer serious and irreparable harm.”

Some 13 abortion clinics in Texas will reportedly close after a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the state Thursday to fully enforce a new law that requires abortion facilities to meet the same health and safety standards as ambulatory surgical centers. In a 38-page decision published Thursday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, granted in part, a motion filed by the state of Texas to stay a district court's injunction against the law, and finds that the law is constitutional and does not place an undue burden...

The decision notably affects Planned Parenthood, which sued the state over the matter in April, saying the exclusion violated its constitutional rights. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel on Monday granted a preliminary injunction to require the state to keep Planned Parenthood in the program until he makes a decision on the merits of the case. But Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an emergency stay of the injunction, which was granted by Judge Jerry E. Smith. The attorney general's office pressed the argument that Texas would have to shut down the...