A Hood County official calls Greg Abbott’s order ‘heavy-handed.’ But his idea’s worse
A suburban county attorney is challenging Gov. Greg Abbott, asking the Texas attorney general to stop him from closing businesses or ordering Texans to stay home during the coronavirus pandemic.
Hood County Attorney Matthew Mills of DeCordova wants Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to rule Abbott’s order unconstitutional.
If, say, a barber or beautician carrying COVID-19 infects every resident in a nursing home, then to Mills that’s just tough luck.
“Freedom always has danger,” Mills said Thursday.
Look, you’d think Hood County would be the last place anyone would challenge a disease order.
More than 15,000 of the 61,000-plus residents are older than 65 and at high risk. And many Texans carrying COVID-19 don’t even know.
Yet their elected county attorney would leave public safety to a matter of personal whim.
“I don’t believe in the heavy-handed role of government,” said Mills, a self-described “Ron Paul Republican” elected in 2017 and recently named the Hood County Kiwanian of the Year.
He’s concerned about life and death.
For businesses.
“I don’t see how they can pick and choose which businesses live and which ones die,” he said.
(It’s personal for Mills, too. A family member’s mastectomy for breast cancer was postponed last week, he said.)
In Fort Worth, a constitutional law professor at Texas A&M Law School said Abbott’s authority to order closings is “not even a close call.”
The U.S. Constitution stands except in the face of a “compelling public interest,” professor Lynne Rambo said.
“I think a pandemic is the very definition of a compelling public interest,” she said. “There is no way to tell who’s spreading it.”
Mills asked Paxton for a non-binding ruling on whether emergency law allows state and local governments to take over businesses and also whether it deprives Texans of their rights
Yet the law says word-for-word not once but twice that the governor, county judges and mayors may “control the movement of persons and the occupancy of premises.”
Hood County is following Abbott’s orders and a stricter March 25 order by County Judge Ron Massengill, Mills said. County commissioners will review that Tuesday.
If Mills were county judge instead of county attorney, his order would be simpler.
“I’d like for the government to just advise people to keep a safe distance and be careful,” he said. “Minimize contact, but don’t just blanketly shut down giant sections of the economy and put barbers in jail.”
That way, by mid-May, hospitals such as Lake Granbury Medical Center would be overflowing. The danger would be that dozens of others would die for lack of ICU beds or respirators.
“There’s danger driving to work,” Mills said.
“In life, there’s always danger.”
Mills said he decided to write Paxton after watching a video from Arlington political gadfly Warren Norred, a libertarian Republican lawyer and chronic failed candidate.
Norred is among the libertarian Republican activists and Tea Party leaders who have openly mocked Abbott’s and local county judges’ orders and authority.
In Dallas County, prominent Republican lawyer Elizabeth Bingham Alvarez sided with Abbott and judges.
The government is always allowed to seize businesses in crisis or war, she said, and the government can limit free speech or movement temporarily for a compelling reason.
“This is a pandemic, not your average Tuesday in April,” she said.
Carrollton lawyer Andy Olivo, a former city councilman well-versed on emergency authority, said Mills’ questions are already answered in state law and in past attorney general opinions.
Texas law clearly allows limiting business hours within reason, Olivo said, adding that it could be argued that video streaming reasonably allows freedom of gathering during an emergency.
Olivo describes Mills’ letter as mainly “a good resume-builder for elective office.”
Only in Hood County.
This story was originally published April 4, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
