Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statewide executive order banning businesses and institutions from requiring individuals to provide proof of coronavirus vaccination.
In a move against the Biden administration’s mandate that most larger employers require employees to be vaccinated or submit to a COVID-19 testing regimen, Abbot said that Texans should be allowed to “opt out of being forced to take a vaccine for reasons of conscience or medical reasons.”
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VACCINE MANDATE CRITICS LAY IN WAIT FOR BIDEN ROLLOUT
“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,” the order said. “I hereby suspend all relevant statutes to the extent necessary to enforce this prohibition.”
Most federal mandates that are in place or being considered do allow certain religious and medical exemptions, but antibodies from prior COVID-19 infections are not among them.
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Abbott said that vaccine mandates are detrimental to the state’s economic recovery and that President Joe Biden’s mandate amounts to “federal overreach” and “bullying” that would cause “workforce disruptions that threaten Texas’s continued recovery from the COVID-19 disaster.”
Abbott also stipulated that the executive order supersede any local ordinances.
