With a ruling expected next week in the protracted legal battle surrounding Houston’s equal rights ordinance, city attorneys entered a motion for judgment late Friday afternoon that says opponents of the law are 650 signatures shy of triggering a repeal referendum.
District Judge Robert Schaffer will hold a formal hearing Monday morning.
The city’s latest count puts conservative opponents of the law closer to triggering a vote than ever before, but still short of the needed 17,269 valid signatures.
“Under the jury’s verdict, and under any honest application of the court’s rulings, plaintiffs lose, the city wins, and civil rights are safe in Houston, Texas,” said Geoffrey Harrison, lead attorney for the city.
The plaintiffs have yet to submit their updated tally but say they’re well over the threshold.
See here, here, and here for the background. The issue here is with the legibility of circulator signatures, not the signatures on the petitions themselves. The plaintiffs filed a post-trial brief arguing that petitions with illegible circulator signatures and no accompanying printed names should be counted if the circulator signature can be matched to another signature elsewhere. The city filed a response disputing the plaintiffs’ methodology and argument, and noting that they had already benefited from the original ruling that allowed these otherwise incorrectly collected pages to be counted in the first place. Judge Schaffer gets to sort it all out on Monday, and from there it goes to appeal, no matter what he rules. It’s going to be a crazy day on Monday, that’s for sure.
Human / Civil / Equal Rights should NEVER be voted on anyway. That empowers OPPRESSION. The only involvement by government should be to ensure those rights are protected. And that’s why the city is doing its job with the creation of HERO. And this ‘referendum’ is all a waste of time and money by self-righteous bigots.