A school district in Texas and the state’s attorney general have won a federal lawsuit against a Biden administration vaccine mandate, winning an injunction on vaccine and mask mandates within a federal education program in state schools.
The injunction applied to a school program funded by the federal government, which had sought to mandate masks and vaccines as a condition of enrollment in Texas schools. Attorney General Ken Paxton suggested that other state attorney generals will follow in his footsteps following the victory, stepping up to challenge vaccine mandates forced upon local school districts.
The Lubbock Independent School District and Texas AG Ken Paxton had called upon the federal court system to overthrow mandates related to federally-funded Head Start programs across the country, although Judge James “Wesley” Hendrix” applied his injunction exclusively to the state of Texas. Judge Henrix, a Trump appointee of the Northern District of Texas, issued the injunction on Friday.
LISD had warned that the mask and vaccine mandates had the potential to force low-income students out of the program, intended to aid the educational prospects of at-risk youth, and would hurt staffing and morale of the educational workforce.
