#WorkforceWednesday: OSHA ETS in Review, Texas Vaccine Mandate Ban, Health Premium Incentives - Employment Law This Week®
What Can Businesses Do After Texas Lifts the Mask Mandate?
In July 2024, Governor Greg Abbott announced that the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) awarded over $95 million in housing tax credits to help finance the development and rehabilitation of more than...more
Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s latest push against vaccine mandates takes form in a new law now in force in the Lone Star State. Senate Bill 7 prohibits private employers from adopting or enforcing certain COVID-19 vaccine...more
On June 18, 2023, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed H.B. 4, otherwise known as the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA). Following substantive legislative action in Tennessee, Montana, and Indiana, Texas now becomes...more
Texas has joined the nine other states that have comprehensive data privacy laws after Governor Greg Abbott signed the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (the “TDPSA”). Subject to exemptions, the TDPSA applies to any entity...more
Texas will likely become the 11th state to pass a consumer privacy law. H.B. 4, the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA), was passed by both houses of the Texas legislature last week, and the bill is now headed to...more
On May 17, 2023, the Texas Senate approved Senate Bill No. 14 (SB 14), prohibiting physicians from providing gender-affirming medical care to minors experiencing gender dysphoria (distress that results from having one’s...more
The Texas Legislature is in session every other year, with 2022 as the interim. After a robust regular session, followed by three special sessions and a new spike in COVID-19 cases, legislators have not been quick to return...more
In recent months, Delta-8—a cannabinoid derived from the hemp plant—has emerged in Texas news. Delta-8 products have been sold in Texas since the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, commonly known as the 2018 Farm Bill,...more
As many may have seen, on October 11, 2021, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas issued Executive Order No. GA-40 (the "Texas Order"), immediately limiting Texas employers' ability to compel employees to receive COVID-19...more
With OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standard requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for employers with 100 or more employees to be released shortly, a number of states have begun efforts to counter such mandates, or place additional...more
In a move sure to generate controversy, confusion, and litigation, on October 11, 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an Executive Order effectively prohibiting all private businesses from requiring employees or customers...more
On Oct. 11, 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed Executive Order No. GA-40 (EO), which prohibits any “entity in Texas” from compelling an employee or consumer to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if that person objects to the...more
On July 29, 2021, Governor Abbott issued Executive Order GA-38 relating to the continued response to the COVID-19 disaster. The order provided requirements and guidance regarding testing, vaccines, and operating limits for...more
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, on March 16, 2020, at the Attorney General’s request, Governor Greg Abbott utilized Section 418.016 of the Government Code to suspend certain requirements of the Texas Open Meetings Act...more
Today, Texas legislators will reconvene for a special session to address the 11 agenda items recently issued by Governor Abbott. This article summarizes the items up for discussion during the session, including two emergency...more
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed HB 1445 into law, making “medical or dental services” exempt from sales tax. Under the statute, a “medical or dental billing service” is defined as “assigning codes for the preparation of...more
On March 2, 2021, Texas joined the list of 11 states that have lifted or lessened their COVID-19 restrictions. Governor Abbott issued an Executive Order, to be effective on March 10, 2021, beginning the re-opening of Texas in...more
Update: On the evening of October 29, 2020, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego issued Order No. 13 “Stay Home/Stay Safe.” Order No. 13 supersedes all prior orders unless referenced in Order No. 13. Order No. 13 went into...more
Yesterday, Governor Greg Abbott announced plans to continue Texas’ reopening process after the coronavirus pandemic brought public activity in much of the state to a halt earlier this year. Executive Order GA-30 allows...more
With Hurricane Laura’s landfall on the Texas-Louisiana border early Thursday morning, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (“TCEQ”) will soon be requesting that Governor Greg Abbott issue a rule suspension. As...more
With multiple news reports of Democrats making a push in Texas both at the federal level and at the state legislative level in light of gains the Democratic Party made in the state in the 2018 cycle, the next redistricting...more
The State of Texas officially banned the manufacture and sale of smokable hemp products and hemp vapor cartridges. Effective August 2, 2020, the Texas Department of State Health Services (the “DSHS”) issued a final rule...more
As we previously reported in April, Texas’s initial approach to foreclosures in light of the coronavirus was “ad hoc” and the decision whether to halt foreclosures was left to the various counties in which the sales were...more
In response to Governor Greg Abbott’s recent proclamation and the rise in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in various parts of the state, county judges and mayors continue to issue orders related to restrictions and...more
On May 8, 2020, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins issued an amended public health control order which brings the current scope of Dallas County’s COVID-19 regulation of reopening businesses and services closer to recent...more