Migrants’ lawsuit against company that flew them to Martha’s Vineyard can proceed

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Of interest.

A federal judge in Boston has ruled that migrants flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022 can proceed with a lawsuit against the Florida company that took them there.

The judge also dismissed claims against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials named in the suit.

Three migrants from Venezuela, along with an immigrant rights group, filed the lawsuit. They say that Florida’s governor, others in his administration and an air transport company conspired to mislead them and deprive them of their civil rights when they recruited and flew them to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022.

In their lawsuit, the migrants, identified as Yanet, Pablo and Jesus say they were told they were going to Massachusetts, but didn’t know their final destination was Martha’s Vineyard until shortly before landing.

The plaintiffs say a videographer hired by the DeSantis administration recorded them arriving and boarding vans. But apart from the videographer and van drivers, the plaintiffs say no one else in Martha’s Vineyard had any advance notice of their arrival.

In her order, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs says the case can proceed against the air transport company, Vertol. Judge Burroughs dismissed claims against Gov. DeSantis and other members of his administration out of jurisdictional concerns, but did so “without prejudice.” That means the legal team representing the migrants can seek to bring DeSantis and others back into the case as it goes forward.

In the 77-page filing, Judge Burroughs had harsh words for those involved in the scheme. “Vertol and the other Defendants here were not legitimately enforcing any immigration laws,” she wrote, adding, “the Court sees no legitimate purpose for rounding up highly vulnerable individuals on false pretenses and publicly injecting them into a divisive national debate.”

See here for some background. The Bexar County Sheriff later filed some charges relating to this but I don’t recall ever seeing the details about that; my guess it was mostly small-potatoes stuff. The city of Los Angeles took steps to sue Greg Abbott over the buses sent there, but again I haven’t seen much in the news about it since then. While it would be nice to haul the likes of Abbott and DeSantis into court over stull like this, successfully suing the bus companies and airlines that do their dirty work is almost as good, as if it costs them a big judgment to get involved, they’ll stop doing it. I suspect we have a long way to go with this one, so be patient. The Current has more.

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Dispatches from Dallas, April 5 edition

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, it’s a grab bag with a lot of topics, including: cybersecurity; avian flu; scary anti-abortion GOP types; Tarrant County commissioners up to their usual shenanigans; immigration news; heat islands in Dallas; another theory about the Dallas City Council’s Project X; South Dallas news about Fair Park and the Forest Theater; the bling of a World Series ring; and baby Jameela the gorilla finds a foster mom at last.

This week’s post was brought to you by the ambient modern classical music of Nils Frahm, which is good accompaniment to writing.

This week we have something of a grab bag, so let’s dive into it:

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The Fifth Circuit has its merits hearing on SB4

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is the big one.

A federal appeals court heard arguments Wednesday from Texas and the federal government about whether it should continue blocking a new Texas law that would let state police arrest migrants suspected of entering the U.S. illegally.

The three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans now has to rule on the appeal of a lower court’s injunction that stopped Senate Bill 4 from going into effect. The same panel decided to keep SB 4 on hold a week ago until it could rule on whether the law is constitutional.

The Biden administration and civil rights organizations sued Texas to stop the law, claiming SB 4 is unconstitutional because it interferes with federal immigration laws. The law’s proponents have argued that the law simply mirrors federal law, which they claim is not being enforced by federal authorities.

Texas Solicitor General Aaron Lloyd Nielson told the appellate panel on Wednesday morning that the law was crafted in a way that “goes up to the line of Supreme Court precedent,” and conceded it may have crossed that line.

[…]

Nielsen said Wednesday that under the law, Texas “doesn’t deport anybody.” He said police would take migrants to a port of entry, which are controlled by the federal government.

“Texas takes them to a port of entry and the United States then decides what to do,” Nielsen said. “That’s critical about this … it’s portrayed as Texas is ourself just like flying people off to some other place and that’s not accurate.”

Mexican officials have said they won’t accept repatriations from Texas. Mexico has agreements with the federal government detailing which migrants it will accept after they’re deported by U.S. immigration officials.

Biden administration lawyer Daniel Bentele Hahs Tenny pointed to a part SB 4 that requires a person to be returned to the country from which they entered the U.S.

“They now say, I guess, that you don’t actually have to do that, that maybe you just go to the port of entry and that’s good enough,” Tenny said.

See here and here for the most recent updates. The arguments here aren’t substantially different than those made in the hearing over whether to keep the temporary block in place. The main difference is that the state of Texas seems to have accepted that it’s not going to get a clear victory, so they’re trying to encourage the court to keep at least some of the law in place. Which could happen – I have no idea what the odds are of that, or how much of the law we could be talking about, but this is the Fifth Circuit and they do have a long history of giving Ken Paxton what he wants. The real question is how long it takes them to hand down their opinion. CNN and TPR have more.

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More on Rep. Nehls’ ethics investigation

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Again, could be something, could be nothing.

Rep. Troy Nehls

U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls said he is cooperating with a House ethics committee “matter” that he says is related to his campaign finances.

After the House Ethics Committee last week acknowledged they were looking into an undisclosed issue involving Nehls, the Fort Bend County Republican quickly offered to assist them.

“My campaign has complied with every Federal Election Commission (FEC) law, and my books are open,” Nehls said.

[…]

In December 2023, the FEC flagged Nehls’ campaign report for inaccurate fundraising totals. In October, he reported raising nearly $365,000 and spending $216,000. After the FEC inquiry, he submitted an amended report in January showing he had actually raised $484,000 and spent about $314,000.

Those campaign fundraising totals have since grown to $525,274 raised and $353,000 spent, according to his latest report filed in February. He had about $588,000 in his campaign account heading into the March primary elections.

See here for the background. This is all consistent with there being a clerical error or some other readily fixable situation. It’s also possible this goes quite a bit deeper. We won’t know until we hear from the committee, which as noted will be in May. I’ll keep an eye on it.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Extending parking meter hours downtown

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m okay with this.

Houston City Council will vote to extend the time residents will have to pay city parking meters on Wednesday.

The current ordinance requires drivers who park in metered spots to pay between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The new ordinance would keep the start time at 7 a.m., but extend the period people will have to pay to 2 a.m.

The new change will not increase parking rates, if passed, but is expected to generate more revenue for the city, said Council Member Edward Pollard, who introduced the agenda item with Council Members Fred Flickinger and Tiffany Thomas.

“This is a way in which we can trickle on small amounts that will add up over time,” Pollard said.

City ordinance requires ParkHouston, which oversees parking meters in Houston, to keep a $2 million fund balance. Any revenue made that exceeds the fund balance goes into the city’s general fund, said Billy Rudolph, chief of staff of the city’s Administrative and Regulatory Affairs Department.

Before the pandemic, the city received approximately $10 million in ParkHouston revenue for the general fund, Rudolph said. Last year, the city received approximately $5 million.

Pollard believes that cash amount could double with the extension.

“The administration says that we’re broke,” Pollard said. “I don’t necessarily believe that, but I do believe that we are going to have to find ways to bring in more revenue.”

[…]

Mayor John Whitmire did not respond directly to questions of whether he would support the proposal, but he said that a robust discussion would likely follow at City Council this week.

“In this case, three Council Members are playing an active role by introducing an idea to help bring additional revenue to the city,” Whitmire wrote in a statement. “Such a privilege also comes with a duty to do more than present a good idea.”

Whitmire added that before this proposal could go forward, council members would have to get input from the public and weigh the potential unintended consequences of implementing the change.

While Pollard is optimistic about the potential change, business leaders who work downtown, where many of the city’s parking meters are located, are raising red flags.

Kris Larson, president and CEO of Downtown Houston, which operates as the umbrella group for the area’s development organizations, told the Chronicle he was first approached about the potential changes by the mayor’s office and Council Member Joaquin Martinez, who represents downtown – not by the three members of council who put the item on the agenda.

“What problem are we trying to solve with this change?” Larson asked. “Is this simply about revenue and trying to maximize the amount of revenue that the city can collect in the short term?”

Well, yes. That’s what it’s about. And it’s fine. Look, if you go downtown to see a show or watch an Astros game and you park on the street, you’re probably paying to park through 11 PM. If the hours in which you have to pay get extended to 2 AM, you might pay for a little extra time, like to 11:30 or midnight, but not that much more. The shows we see at the Hobby Center are usually out by 10:30 or so. Astros games start at 7 and thanks to the new rules are likely to be over by around 10. You might pad your time a bit to hedge against the risk of a ticket, but at worst it’ll cost you another two or three bucks. Most people will barely notice. I get why Downtown Houston doesn’t like this, but I think they’re blowing it way out of proportion.

And yes, we need the revenue. There are only so many options for increasing revenue, which is absolutely going to be needed to pay for the firefighter pay agreement. Hell, it was needed even before this settlement. I’m not a fan of CM Pollard, but I appreciate that he’s thinking outside the box here and putting forward some solutions, using Prop A to make sure they get heard to boot. I hope the Mayor doesn’t oppose this proposal.

UPDATE: The parking meter proposal was delayed for a week while another proposal to allow for more Council discretion in getting speed humps built in their neighborhoods was referred to a new “Proposition A” committee, which is a Mayor Whitmire creation. We’ll keep an eye on that.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of April 1

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old Texas Progressive Alliance weekly roundup.

Continue reading →

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One more whiny election loser lawsuit

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I know, we all thought we were done with these.

Nearly five months after Harris County’s November 2022 election results were upheld in court, another unsuccessful Republican judicial candidate laid out a similar set of facts before the same judge in the same downtown Houston courtroom on Monday, seeking a different outcome.

This time, the case hinges on whether the judge can be persuaded to order a new election in a race with a much narrower vote margin.

Tami Pierce, like another 20 GOP candidates for Harris County offices, filed a lawsuit challenging the results of the 2022 midterm elections, which were marred by a ballot paper shortage on election day that impaired voting at around 20 out of 782 polling locations.

Though Judge David Peeples, a visiting judge from Bexar County who has presided over the entire group of lawsuits, has previously upheld results in other races, this lawsuit for the 180th District Court seat could swing in the other direction because Pierce’s opponent, incumbent Democrat Judge DaSean Jones, defeated her by just 449 out of over 1 million votes cast.

Peeples ruled last November that while he found “many mistakes and violations of the Election Code,” there were not enough votes in doubt to justify ordering a new election in the 189th District Court race, which GOP candidate Erin Lunceford lost to Democrat Judge Tamika Craft by 2,743 votes.

Peeples upheld results in 15 cases for the same reasons, while another three candidates dropped their lawsuits before his ruling. Lunceford’s case is currently on appeal.

Pierce finally got her day in court on Monday – the last case to go before the judge despite having the closest margin. The case was separated from the others and set on a delayed track after Jones filed a motion that was meant to deter meritless lawsuits.

See here for the last update, which was the ruling in the previous batch of lawsuits. The plaintiff’s case in this one is more or less the same as before – I drafted this on Monday night but didn’t see any further updates on Tuesday – so it’s basically whether the judge thinks maybe this election could have been affected, if the same claims about “missing” votes are considered to be factual. If they are, I’ll note that loser Tami Pierce would still need to win about 58% of those missing votes in order to make up that 449-vote deficit; it’s just below 58% if we believe every one of those people would have voted in that race, and just above 58% if we assume an undervote rate of 3.5%, which is what it was for the other ballots in the 180th Civil District Court election.

Now, if you could name all 2,891 missing voters and determine where they lived and what their race and ethnicity and class and education and past voting histories were, you could imagine a pool of that size in an election that was otherwise almost uniformly Democratic that might have voted 58% or more for a Republican. But of course we can’t do that because (whoops!) the Republican plaintiffs and their lawyers and enablers were never able to find any actual voters who could credibly claim that the temporary loss of the printer at their voting location meant they were completely unable to vote at any time or any other location in Harris County. So given that, we have to ask what are the odds that a random group of 2,891 voters in Harris County would be 58% Republican. That question answers itself.

Does that make this a slam dunk for the defendant? Well no – if it were, surely the judge would have strongly entertained a motion to dismiss by now, to save us all the trouble. I don’t know what the judge will do – I thought he was a little histrionic in his original ruling, even if he got the answer correct – but this is the math. You tell me what the odds are.

Oh and by the way, while this was the closest race won by a Democrat, it wasn’t the closest race from the 2022 election. That would be the race for County Criminal Court #3, in which Democrat Porsha Brown lost to Republican Leslie Johnson by 267 votes, a bit more than half the margin in the contested Jones/Pierce race. But you haven’t ever heard of that race, because Porsha Brown didn’t file a whiny sore loser election lawsuit. She accepted the outcome of the election, as one does. Just so we’re clear about that.

UPDATE: And here’s the Chron story from day two, which reports that plaintiff Pierce is trying to get a bunch of people’s votes thrown out, which is a change in strategy from the original set of lawsuits. Still reprehensible, but at least it’s not a rerun.

Posted in Election 2022, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The judge-shopping will continue for the foreseeable future

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’re gonna have to make them stop.

The chief judge of the northern district of Texas, home to infamous Trump judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, has informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that the district will not change its case assigning practices, in repudiation of a new anti-judge shopping policy.

“The district judges of the Northern District of Texas met on March 27, 2024, and discussed case assignment,” Chief Judge David Godbey wrote to Schumer in a letter dated March 29. “The consensus was not to make any change to our case assignment process at this time.”

It’s a brazen rejection of a recent policy change at the Judicial Conference, the policy-making body for the federal courts. Last month, the Conference announced that all cases seeking nationwide relief against a federal or state government action should go through a randomization process — necessary to stop right-wing litigants from planting anti-Biden administration cases with judges like Kacsmaryk, who gets virtually all of the cases filed in his division. His habitual granting of nationwide injunctions means that his rulings are not only nearly always a win for those litigants, but that they also block federal government action for the entire country.

Schumer wrote to the northern Texas chief soon after the Judicial Conference announced its policy change, posing a list of questions, including when the district would adopt the new policy.

In a Monday statement, the Senate majority leader called it “unfortunate” that Godbey wouldn’t end the “odious practice.”

“The Senate will consider legislative options that put an end to this misguided practice,” he added, though such efforts have lost steam before, and would almost certainly die in the Republican House.

See here for the background. There was concern at the time that there could be issues with enforcing this new process, and you can see why with this response. The question now is what can be done about it. The obvious-to-me answer is to codify this (and some other reforms about national injunctions and other matters) into the law, and include a provision that says any judge who violates these procedures is subject to sanctions up to and including removal from the bench. This can’t be left up to the impeachment process because there’s no way on God’s green earth that there will ever be a two-thirds majority to impeach a federal judge for acting like a blatant partisan. Also, too, appoint more judges that do respect the law and the fact that we live in a society. Needless to say, both of those remedies will require another Democratic triumvirate, one that does not rest on the likes of Manchin and Sinema. That ain’t gonna be easy, but it’s what we need to do. KERA has more.

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And the seas will rise

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’re so not ready for this.

Cities along the Gulf Coast are bracing for 10 to 12 inches of sea level rise by 2050, and data from a study in the journal Nature last week showed those risks will be exacerbated as urban areas sink to meet the sea.

Researchers from Virginia Tech, Brown University and other institutions mapped the impacts of sea level rise and coastal subsidence, or the sinking of land near the ocean, and found that land sinking would exacerbate sea level rise in some urban areas along the Gulf to a greater degree than other cities in the 32-municipality study.

The study projected that between 2020 and 2050, subsidence would account for about a fifth to a third of the new land below sea level in the urban areas analyzed on the Gulf Coast, compared to just over a tenth on the Atlantic coast and about 5% on the Pacific.

“As sea level rises and land subsides, the hazards associated with climate extremes (for example, hurricanes and storm surges), shoreline erosion and inundation of low-lying coastal areas grow,” the study said.

The authors identified each coastal city’s risk of storm damage using localized data on flooding and calculating how much each segment of land had been subsiding. Sinking ground is found most often in urban areas with clay-like soil where groundwater and oil extraction irreparably compact the earth.

“A lot of the coastal areas that we have around the U.S. are made up of young sediment, the latest geological materials to be deposited on land,” said Leonard Ohenhen, a coastal resilience expert at Virginia Tech and the study’s lead author. “They are easily compressible, and that… compaction leads to subsidence.”

His team’s paper also honed in on the potential costs of high tide flooding for five Texas cities: Port Arthur, Galveston, Texas City, Freeport and Corpus Christi.

The analysis found that across the five coastal Texas cities in the study, thousands more homes and tens of thousands more residents could be exposed by mid-century to flood devastation following the combination of sea level rise and sinking land.

You can read the paper here. The authors do say that we’re a lot better at disaster preparedness now, which will mitigate the overall impact, so we’ve got that going for us. Look, there is a lot being done to try to minimize the effects of climate change, and there is also a lot being done to resist those efforts. Maybe taking a few of the leaders of that wretched resistance and burying them up to their heads in the sand in places like Port Arthur and Galveston might help a bit. I’m just thinking out loud here.

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The SD15 special election is now a two candidate race

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From Campos.

Rep. Jarvis Johnson

Commentary said this after the Democratic Party Primary about three and a half weeks ago:

“For what it is worth, according to the Texas Secretary of State website, Michelle Bonton, Molly Cook, State Rep. Jarvis Johnson, and Todd Litton were the only ones to file for the May 4 State Senate District 15 Special Election to fill the vacancy and serve out the rest of the term that ends on December 31 of this year. Looks like only Jarvis and Molly will be campaigning.”

I got my mail ballot for the May 4, 2024, election which includes the State Senate District 15 Special and the Harris Central Appraisal District Board of Directors races. See the featured photo. Only Molly Cook and State Rep. Jarvis Johnson are listed on the ballot for SD 15. I guess Michelle Bonton and Todd Litton had their names removed from the ballot. I think. Oh, well.

Molly Cook

I can confirm this. The SOS Candidate Lookup actually shows that five candidates had filed – the four mentioned by Campos plus Beto Cardenas, which comes as a surprise to me because he was not listed there before – but the three who aren’t Molly Cook or Jarvis Johnson all show a status of “Withdrew”. Not a big surprise that the people who know they will not be on the ballot in November have decided not to invest time and energy in the race to serve out the remainder of Mayor Whitmire’s term. It also means there won’t be a runoff for this, which I think we can all agree is a benefit.

It does leave in place the possibility that the winner of this race will not be the person getting sworn in next January. (Yes, I know, there’s a Republican on the November ballot too, but come on. He ain’t gonna win.) If we’d continued to have more than two candidates, the special election runoff would have been in June, and we would have known who the November candidate was. In that case, the person who had lost the primary runoff could have dropped out of the special election runoff and ensured uniformity of service. That it turned out this way isn’t a surprise given the elections calendar. At least either way we avoid a June runoff.

Well, we avoid a June runoff for this race. Remember that the HCAD elections will also be on May 4, and each of those three positions has more than two candidates in it. I can guarantee we will have at least one and probably all three of those races going into overtime in June. If you think this election is going to be sparsely attended, wait until the runoffs for those HCAD spots. That said, if they all boil down to a D versus R showing, we could see some actual money come in and maybe boost participation a bit. But believe me when I say, your vote in those HCAD races will count for a lot. Because so few other people will also be voting. It’s crazy, I know, but at least it’s only in May (and June) this one time.

I will have some interviews with HCAD candidates starting next week. Look for those so you can figure out who to support.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Influencer disclosures

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I approve of this.

Texas’ top campaign finance watchdog gave initial approval last week to a proposal that would require social media users to disclose if they are being paid to share or create political advertisements.

The Texas Ethics Commission’s action comes just months after The Texas Tribune reported that a secretive and politically-connected company, called Influenceable LLC, paid internet influencers to defend Attorney General Ken Paxton ahead of his Senate impeachment trial.

The proposed rule could be finalized at the commission’s next meeting in June.

Commissioners did not mention Influenceable by name at their March 20 meeting. But the agency’s general counsel, James Tinley, noted that the rule change was in response to “at least one business” that paid social media users for undisclosed political messaging.

“It is not a hypothetical,” he said. “There is at least one business whose business model now is to do just that.”

In August, the Tribune reported on Influenceable’s attempts to sway public opinion ahead of the impeachment trial by paying Gen Z social media influencers — some with millions of online followers — to claim that Paxton was the victim of a witch hunt. They also flooded social media with posts that accused House Speaker Dade Phelan, a longtime Paxton foe who greenlit the House investigation, of being a drunk.

[…]

Influenceable’s tactics outraged some Republicans last summer. Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, told the Tribune at the time that he was disgusted by the “manufactured outrage” and called for Influenceable to be investigated. Oliverson, who announced last week that he is running to be House speaker for the 2025 legislative session, also said he’d like lawmakers to address companies like Influenceable when they next meet. Since then — and amid a 2024 GOP primary that was rife with misinformation — other Republicans have also suggested reforming some of the state’s ethics and political advertising rules.

See here for some background. There’s a lot that ought to be done with campaign finance reform, much of which would certainly run afoul of SCOTUS as currently constituted. One thing that might be doable is exactly this, increasing the amount of transparency required for the money that freely and often very discreetly flows into the system. Maybe it wouldn’t do much to stop it, or to get people to see the puppetmasters when they become more visible, but it would do something. At the very least, the truly repugnant and rapacious forces behind all that cash mostly seem to not like having their names attached to any of it, so this could provide somewhat of a disincentive. I’m more than willing to try it and see. I’m a little surprised to see even this much support for this relatively modest reform, if only because like so much else it all traces back to the same handful of billionaire theocrats that run the modern Republican Party in Texas, but it’s there and I’ll take it. Now let’s see if this also translates to some action in the Lege next year. It would be nice to have at least one piece of legislation to anticipate with something other than dread and disgust.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hearing the eclipse

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is cool.

Blind and low-vision people across North America will be able to experience the upcoming total solar eclipse, thanks to a handheld device that translates light into sound.

The LightSound Box is a tool designed specifically to help people in the visually impaired community experience the eclipse.

“We’ve talked to some blind or low-vision individuals who said in 2017, they felt excluded or they couldn’t participate in the eclipse in a meaningful way to them,” Harvard astronomer Allyson Bieryla said. “They’re really excited to be able to have these devices to use them for the eclipse to experience it in a way that is meaningful to them.”

Bieryla said there’s a light sensor in the device that records the light and brightness. There is also a synthesizer that uses the brightness data recorded to play a corresponding sound.

The device has an audio jack that can be used with headphones or connected to a speaker.

They’ve mapped out a wide range of brightness with different instruments to be able to present the wide range of sunlight that occurs during the eclipse. Bright light is a flute. Mid-range light is a clarinet. Low light is a clicking sound.

“That clicking even slows down and almost goes away in totality,” Bieryla said. “The idea is to not take away from the experience of totality too. During totality, there’s a lot going on. People are gonna react. Animals, insects react. There’s a lot that’s happening so we didn’t want to take away from that either.”

The project was conceived in 2017 ahead of that year’s solar eclipse by Wanda Díaz-Merced and Bieryla. Díaz-Merced, who is blind, and Bieryla first discussed ways to make labs accessible to students.

Then the conversation turned to that year’s solar eclipse. Bieryla said the conversation sparked the idea to create a “low-cost, easy-to build” device that could convert light to sound.

[…]

Three locations in the Houston area have been sent a LightSound Box for next month’s eclipse, according to the LightSound Box website, including Space Center Houston and Conroe ISD.

As I said, very cool. You should go to the LightSound Box website to learn more. The bad news is that the weather forecast for Monday isn’t looking good for eclipse-watchers right now. Maybe that will change for the better. I’m planning to see it as best I can regardless. Be that as it may, kudos to the Harvard team for coming up with the LightSound Box. Axios has more.

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Woman arrested on abortion charge sues Starr County DA

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good for her.

When a Texas woman was arrested and jailed for self-inducing an abortion in 2022, her name and mugshot were quickly broadcast around the world. Three days later, the Starr County prosecutor dropped the charges and was later disciplined for bringing them at all.

But for Lizelle Herrera, now Lizelle Gonzalez, the damage had been done. The “humiliation of a highly publicized indictment and arrest” has “permanently affected her standing in the community,” according to a new federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

Gonzalez is suing Starr County District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez and Assistant District Attorney Alexandria Lynn Barrera for more than $1 million. Prosecutors typically have wide-ranging immunity but the lawsuit alleges Ramirez and Barrera waived that when they undertook the investigation of this case and misled the grand jury.

[…]

According to the lawsuit, Gonzalez first went to the Starr County emergency room in January 2022. She was 19 weeks pregnant and, according to the lawsuit, had taken Cytotec, also known as misoprostol, to purportedly induce an abortion.

She was still registering a fetal heart rate, so she was sent home. The next day, she returned to the hospital by ambulance, complaining of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. There was no fetal cardiac activity, and she was diagnosed with an “incomplete spontaneous abortion” before she delivered the stillborn child by cesarean section.

At some point between those January visits and late March 2022, the lawsuit says, employees of Starr County Memorial Hospital told the Starr County District Attorney’s Office about Gonzalez’s attempted abortion. The allegations were investigated directly by Ramirez’s office, not the sheriff or the local police department, according to the filing.

Barrera and Ramirez then took their findings to a grand jury. The lawsuit says they “present[ed] false information and recklessly misrepresented facts in order to pursue murder charges against Plaintiff for acts clearly not criminal under the Texas Penal Code.”

Gonzalez was arrested for murder on April 7, 2022, and incarcerated at the Starr County jail on a $500,000 bond. Her arrest made international news and mobilized activists across the country, led by organizers in the Rio Grande Valley. The lawsuit says she was taken to the hospital while incarcerated, although it does not say why.

Gonzalez was released on bail organized by national advocacy groups. Three days after she was arrested, Ramirez dropped the charges.

“In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her,” Ramirez said in a news release at the time.

This did little to quell the attention on the case, the lawsuit says.

“Because the charges stemmed from abortion – a hot button political agenda – the dismissal of the charges did not result in any less media attention,” it says. “Rather, the media attention was heightened after the dismissal due to the fact that the prosecution was frivolous.”

Gonzalez is asking for an excess of $1 million for the “deprivation of liberty, reputational harm, public humiliation, distress, pain, and suffering” she experienced as a result of this prosecution. No hearing dates have been set.

See here for the previous update. The basics of this are that Ms. Gonzalez was arrested for actions that are absolutely not illegal under Texas law, that the Starr County DA’s office knew that her actions were not illegal (or damn well ought to have known), that they didn’t bother to utilize law enforcement agencies to investigate before deciding to arrest her but investigated on their own, and that the result of their seemingly reckless actions were directly harmful to her above and beyond what a mere false arrest would have been. That’s why she’s suing. I have no idea how this will do with the “qualified immunity” obstacles that exist, but she is entirely justified in pursuing this and seeing where it goes. I wish her well.

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San Antonio responds to “Reproductive Justice Fund” lawsuit

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good luck.

A lawsuit over the City of San Antonio’s controversial but still undefined Reproductive Justice Fund made its way to a courtroom Thursday.

While the city’s legal team tries to get the case thrown out of court, the city council is close to finally discussing how to spend the money it set aside more than six months ago.

Anti-abortion groups sued the city in October, shortly after the city council created the new $500,000 fund. The city has not determined how the money will be used, but groups like the San Antonio Family Association (SAFA) believe it’s meant to help women access legal, out-of-state abortions by covering their travel costs.

“We think eventually that’s what’s going to take place. Incrementally, they’re going to do that, yes,” the group’s president, Michael Knuffke, said Thursday. “How they do — how they go about that, how they do it legally, I don’t know. But that is exactly the purpose for our case — is to stop it from happening.”

SAFA and Texas Right to Life are the primary plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which asks the court to declare the fund’s establishment in the budget invalid and that it can’t be used to fund any group “that ‘procures’ drug-induced abortions, aids or abets self-managed abortions in Texas, or aids or abets drug-induced abortions in which the pregnant woman swallows either of the two abortion-inducing drugs in Texas, or expels her unborn child in Texas.”

The City of San Antonio has asked the case be dismissed since there has been no decision yet on what services or programs the Reproductive Justice Fund will cover.

“The city could make any number of decisions about what to do with the Reproductive Justice Fund. It could decide to spend money on prenatal care, maternal health services, education, postpartum care. Abortion care is just one of many possibilities,” argued attorney Lauren Ditty in a Thursday court hearing, the first in the case.

[…]

City Manager Erik Walsh initially said the council would discuss the parameters of the fund sometime that fall. More than six months later, that discussion still hasn’t happened, though it appears to be just around the bend.

San Antonio Metropolitan Health District staff are expected to present their recommendations on the fund’s use during an April 10 council meeting.

City Attorney Andy Segovia told KSAT he believed the council has had other priorities on which it wanted to focus first, and it’s difficult to schedule the council’s “B-Sessions,” which typically feature an in-depth discussion on one or two subjects.

“I would say it had nothing to do with the ongoing lawsuit,” Segovia said.

Metro Health will put out a request for proposals after the April 10 meeting, taking into account whatever council members said during the discussion, Segovia said. However, the council will only vote after Metro Health has chosen potential recipients and needs approval for the contracts.

See here for the background. The argument that it’s premature for a lawsuit since the funds haven’t been allocated yet has merit, but if any part of it does go towards abortion access in any form, we’re just delaying the inevitable. And when it does come to that, I remain pessimistic. The reason that fund was set up is also the reason why it’s almost certainly doomed in court, if not right away then later on when it gets to SCOTx. This is also an open invitation (not that any was needed) for the Republicans in the Lege to get even more involved in smacking cities around. I have a lot of sympathy and respect for what San Antonio’s City Council is trying to do. I just don’t think it has any chance of working, and could lead to further bad outcomes. The one positive thing that could happen is more fuel for the Legislative races; there are three potentially flippable districts in Bexar County, and each one represents a step towards saner government. I hope the people who are going to be disappointed and angry about how this turns out remember that. The Current has more.

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Travis Scott wants out of Astroworld lawsuit

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I would too if I were him. Whether he should or he will is another matter.

Houston-born rapper Travis Scott said he should not be held personally responsible for the deaths of 10 people who died in the crushing crowds of his 2021 Astroworld concert, court records show.

In a new motion filed in Harris County 11th Civil District Court this week, Scott — whose real name is Jacques Bermon Webster II — asked for a summary judgment in his favor, which would remove him from the sprawling lawsuit brought against dozens of companies and individuals connected to the concert by hundreds of victims of the tragedy.

[…]

In his motion, Scott argued the plaintiffs’ lawyers hadn’t proven that he or his touring company, XX Global, could be held responsible for injuries people suffered while trying to watch his performance.

“Performers are not expected to render special protection to the audience, nor to safeguard them from the rest of the crowd,” the motion read.

Texas law doesn’t require performers or promoters to protect audience members, the motion reads. And even if it did, Scott’s lawyers said he supported efforts to make more room on the festival grounds by removing rides and ended the show when he was directed to.

“No one disputes that tragedy struck the Astroworld Festival,” the motion read. “But promoting and performing at at a concert do not equate to the power to control a crowd or to design a venue safely.”

In his filing, Scott acknowledged that he “conceived” of the Astroworld concert as an ode to Houston’s defunct amusement park, and that he had some responsibilities for the concert planning: including arranging musical acts, marketing and his own performance.

But Scott said it was understood he was not responsible for venue security, safety or the site’s layout.

In separate motions, other companies connected to Scott, including his Cactus Jack Records label, have sought their own summary judgments.

The record company in a March 11 filing said the plaintiffs’ attorneys had shown “no evidence” that it was responsible for Astroworld.

A grand jury in June declined to indict Scott and others on criminal charges related to the concert.

See here for previous coverage. As noted in the story, several other defendants filed similar motions earlier in the week. I don’t have an opinion on this one as well, though on a gut level Scott seems to me to have some amount of culpability. That has nothing to do with what the law says, of course. Hearings for these and I presume other motions will be heard beginning this week. I’m very interested to see what else comes out of this.

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Weekend link dump for March 31

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is giving away $640 million to 361 nonprofits, her organization — Yield Giving — and Lever for Change announced”.

“Spies, War, Trump: We Still Don’t Really Understand What Paul Manafort Is Up To”.

“What’s needed is a narrative frame about the Trump presidency, crystalizing the choice facing voters, on which all of Trump’s disturbing remarks can be hung—regardless of their intended meaning.”

A deep dive into Mister Rogers’ fashion style.

“As a vocal critic of media coverage of the far-right, I am often asked how the media should cover them. This is a complex issue for a variety of reasons. One is that there is a big tension between how the media are seen by many journalists and readers and what they really are. The idea that the media are the watchdog of democracy is popular, including among journalists, but the reality is that almost all media are businesses. Consequently, they ultimately have an economic, not a political or democratic, logic. Which explains their symbiotic relationship with the far-right. This is not to say that things cannot be improved.”

“Seven states have legalized human composting to date, including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Vermont, and New York.”

A billionaire and his many thugs can avoid a whole lot of scrutiny for just about anything.

“There are clear economic and adaptability benefits to farmers who raise pythons rather than raising pigs”.

“Elon Musk Loses Pathetic Defamation Case Against Hate Speech Watchdog”.

People who like this sort of thing will probably find this the sort of thing that they like.

“Jeopardy! celebrated its 9,000th episode with the Friday, March 22 installment. And every single one of them for the past 40 years has been announced by Johnny Gilbert, who at 95 is still going strong.”

RIP, George W. S. Abbey, former director of the Johnson Space Center and a longtime leader at NASA who was on the team that earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom for bringing home astronauts on the troubled Apollo 13 mission.

“Once you figure that out, you know who’s being scammed in this deal. The answer is: anyone who buys stock in DWAC.”

“And if anyone truly deserves to have Trump steal their money and ruin their lives, it’s his fans. You really can’t argue against it. The face-eating leopards have to eat somebody’s faces, after all, and if people are lining up to get their faces eaten, then it’s difficult to muster up the energy to try to talk them out of it.”

“Several Apple customers recently reported being targeted in elaborate phishing attacks that involve what appears to be a bug in Apple’s password reset feature.”

“Meet the Hos.” I wish that were the start of a joke, but if it is, the joke’s on us.

“Why IVF looks different in the US than in the rest of the world”.

Some birdwatching drama for you.

RIP, Joe Lieberman, former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate.

Disbar him. He should totally be locked up too, but one step at a time.

“Online Conspiracies About the Baltimore Bridge Collapse Are Out of Control“.

“The U.S. State Department on Wednesday offered up to $10 million for information on the “Blackcat” ransomware gang who hit the UnitedHealth Group’s tech unit and snarled insurance payments across America.”

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema circuit is reportedly up for sale. Hope whoever buys it doesn’t screw it up.

RIP, Louis Gossett, Jr, trailblazing actor who won an Emmy for Roots and an Oscar for An Officer And A Gentleman.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 1 Comment

Of course Ted Cruz is getting paid to podcast

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is so stupid.

I hear Cancun is nice

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s office has repeatedly dismissed ethical questions about his three-times-a-week podcasting gig, saying he makes no money from the venture with a company that lobbies Congress.

But over the last year, iHeartMedia, the massive radio network that picked up the “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast in 2022, has made regular, and growing, payments to a super PAC supporting the Texas Republican’s reelection effort. The payments, which the media company says are associated with ad revenue from the podcast, total $630,850 — about a third of the $2 million the Truth and Courage PAC reported raising since the start of 2023, according to the latest Federal Election Commission data.

Ethics and campaign finance experts say the payments appear to be a novel arrangement that blur the lines between what is allowed under campaign finance law and Senate ethics rules. Cruz is the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the communications industry.

“This is not an arrangement we’ve seen before, and it seems like Sen. Cruz is trying to find a way to walk the lines between not falling into an ethics violation and not falling into a campaign finance violation,” said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which filed an ethics complaint about the senator’s podcast deal in 2022.

The Truth and Courage PAC’s stated focus is “ensuring that Ted Cruz is re-elected to the United States Senate in 2024.” It already has started rolling out ads targeting U.S. Rep Colin Allred, the Dallas Democrat and former NFL player running against Cruz in one of the highest-profile races in the nation this November.

Cruz is seen as one of the only potentially vulnerable Republicans in the Senate after narrowly winning reelection in 2018. Cruz’s campaign has been warning donors that the senator already is tied with Allred in polling and bracing for a tougher 2024 reelection campaign than GOP voters might expect.

Ports said the payments from iHeartMedia beg “the question of whether this is an unlawful contribution.” Federal officeholders are prohibited from soliciting a contribution of over $5,000 to a super PAC or directing over $5,000 to a super PAC. So if Cruz told iHeartMedia that it could or should move money to the super PAC, he could be in violation of that law, Ports said.

[…]

IHeartMedia’s latest payment to the PAC, $214,752.98 on Feb. 15, was first reported by Forbes. It was highlighted on social media by Sawyer Hackett, a Democratic strategist working for the Lose Cruz PAC, which has run ads attacking Cruz for the time he spends recording and promoting the podcast. Hackett called for the Senate Ethics Committee and Federal Election Commission to investigate.

The extent of the payments, which go back to March 1, 2023, have not been previously reported.

The Truth and Courage PAC did not respond to questions about how the payments came to be or how it was using the money. The PAC reports the payments not as political contributions, but as “other receipts,” which Ports said is typically how super PACs report money they earn from things like selling lists of mailing or email addresses of past contributors.

The payments come directly from the iHeartMedia company, which is headquartered in San Antonio. Cruz’s super PAC appears to be the only political organization to receive regular payments from the company, according to FEC records. The network has its own PAC that regularly gives to politicians on both sides of the aisle, though in much smaller increments.

Rachel Nelson, vice president of public relations at iHeartMedia, said the network sells the advertising inventory for Cruz’s podcast “as it does for other podcasts — this is a common practice.” Nelson said the payments are “associated with those advertising sales.”

“Senator Cruz volunteers his time to host this podcast and isn’t compensated for it,” Nelson said.

But ethics experts say Cruz is clearly getting something out of the deal.

“Volunteering generally means you’re doing something expecting no personal benefit, but Cruz here is clearly benefiting from the ad revenue that is being generated by his iHeartMedia show,” said Robert Maguire, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group. “He will be getting political support from iHeartMedia’s ad revenues.”

The “volunteers his time” claim is just an insult to everyone’s intelligence. Robert Maguire has this exactly right. The money doesn’t have to be going into Ted Cruz’s pocket for it to be a payment to him. It’s going to his campaign, in a form that is at the least skirting existing law, if not actually illegal. If this truly were a volunteer gig then no money would be changing hands at all. Heck, even if IHeartMedia declined to sell ads on Cruz’s behalf, just having his dumb show on their network is a benefit to Cruz and therefore an in-kind contribution to his campaign. Ted Cruz can pay for his own hosting and sell his own ads, as many independent podcast producers do, or he can get out of the Senate and make podcasting his life’s work, in which case IHeartMedia is welcome to have him on their roster. How much he’d be worth to them under those conditions is another question. The point here is that both IHeartMedia and Ted Cruz are benefitting financially from this arrangement. No one who doesn’t have a basic understanding of how the world works can honestly dispute that. The Current has more.

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HISD’s current goals

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

They have ’em. Some I totally agree with. Others, well, we’ll see.

Houston ISD is expected to expand several of its controversial reforms during the 2024-25 school year, according to a preliminary version of the district’s plans shared earlier this month.

HISD’s state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles presented a draft version of the district’s action plan to the District Advisory Committee last week, along with the Board of Managers. He also previewed the plan with the Principal Advisory Committee and the Teacher Advisory Committee.

The plan, as of March 17, lists 10 of the district’s planned “key actions” for next year, which include plans to reduce hundreds of central office staff positions, call a bond election in November and mandate leadership training for principals.

The listed key actions also include several previously announced plans or initiatives, such as expanding the New Education System to 45 schools, adding hundreds of additional pre-K seats, and creating a new teacher evaluation system to implement in the 2025-2026 school year.

In a statement, HISD said the final version of the document is expected to be publicly released in mid-May, along with the budget proposal.

Here are the goals – the story gives some background info on each of them – with my annotations.

1. Additional New Education System schools
2. November bond election
3. Higher quality instruction
4. Strengthened principal leadership
5. Special education instruction, services
6. Central office efficiency
7. K-8 reading proficiency
8. College, career and military readiness
9. Pre-K program expansion
10. Teacher evaluation, compensation system

Numbers 3, 5, and 7 through 9 all sound good. Number 2, the bond election, is badly needed but more than ever will the details be of vital importance; I would absolutely be willing to play hardball in return for my support on it. Number 4, I think it’s fair to say at this point, is controversial. Number 6 is needed to try to meet the fiscal needs of everything Mike Miles is doing as well as the current budget situation. All we’ve gotten on it so far have been a lot more talk than action. That leaves numbers 1 and 10, and that’s all tied up very much in one’s belief that Miles has us on the right track, among other things. I don’t think I have anything new to add to what I’ve been saying, so let’s leave this here as a note for future reference. We’ll definitely be coming back to the bond one, trust me on that.

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“If you’ve ever gardened, you know you have to weed”

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

What Allyn West says.

I moved to Montrose in 2008, just in time for Hurricane Ike to welcome me to the Gulf Coast formally, and I lived on Crocker at Avondale during the pandemic. When Hurricane Harvey claimed the Honda Civic I’d been driving, I didn’t have much choice but relying on my own two feet, BCycle and Metro to get around. (And Uber. OK?)

It was all my years of trudging that made me perk up most when I saw the Montrose Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone’s long-term plan to turn Montrose Boulevard into an experience worthy of the name. Hundreds of new trees! Wider, comfortable sidewalks! Safer intersections! Bedroom-sized boxes buried underground to catch the worst of increasingly heavy rains! What’s not to want?

If only it were so simple. The plan — and now the TIRZ itself — has faced opposition of late by people whose online petition and participation at public meetings suggests a concern with the fate of the boulevard’s street trees. I get it — I’m a professional treehugger. Trees for Houston’s Barry Ward told me years ago his organization plants 20,000 trees a year — and that’s all they do. But we should be planting more like 200,000 a year. We need as many trees as we can get.

Which is why I don’t get why there’s opposition to a plan that calls for 137 new live oak and cypress trees to be planted just on the first 0.3-mile stretch of the project between West Clay and Allen Parkway. David Greaney is a Gauge Engineering project manager working with the TIRZ. He told me that nearly 600 new trees will be planted from here to U.S. 59 in all, replacing every one they remove with at least two more. (Much of this is online.) Though 57 older trees, not all live oaks, need to be removed for the first part of the project for one reason or another, a TIRZ presentation stresses, “existing mature trees will be protected and preserved.”

In all-caps, just above that, it practically shouts: “NO HEALTHY, MATURE LIVE OAK TREES IN THE MEDIAN WILL BE REMOVED OR REPLACED.”

What am I missing? What’s so special about these 57 trees — some redbuds, some crape myrtles, some live and post oaks — that, TIRZ president Joe Webb said, were planted less than strategically in the 1990s? What about them justifies a “demand” for “a pause” on a plan that would result in at least 80 more 65-gallon-sized, 14-foot trees than are there now and hundreds of others that will outlive us all?

There’s a video at the top of the op-ed that shows some of what West is talking about, watch it before you read. I’d seen a few stories about the mishegoss over this plan but hadn’t really read about it. With the broader concern about pedestrian and bike-friendly infrastructure projects now, I thought I’d better get up to speed. This project is fully funded and is just awaiting approval from the Mayor. As with West 11th Street, there are some disproportionately loud voices in opposition who seem to be getting all the attention. I lived in Montrose for a decade before moving to the Heights, and Allyn is right about how it really should be much more walkable, but it’s not. And this is a great chance to do something, a very big something, about it. I too don’t know why this is being held up. Let’s please move forward with this.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Crystal Mason’s conviction for illegal voting overturned

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Justice at last.

A Texas appeals court on Thursday overturned the illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason, who was given a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for federal tax evasion.

The decision by the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals means she is formally acquitted of the felony voting charge. The court said in the decision that there was no evidence Mason knew she was ineligible to vote when she cast her ballot — which is a condition that must be met in order to convict her of illegal voting.

Mason has maintained throughout the seven-year case that she did not know she was ineligible and would not have risked her freedom if she had. She said Thursday in a statement that her long legal fight, which gained international attention, was devastating.

“I am overjoyed to see my faith rewarded today,” Mason said. “I was thrown into this fight for voting rights and will keep swinging to ensure no one else has to face what I’ve endured for over six years, a political ploy where minority voting rights are under attack.”

The case thrust Mason, who is Black, into the political fray amid a Republican-led crackdown on voter fraud, partly fueled by baseless claims of rampant illegal voting.

“I’ve cried and prayed every night for over six years straight that I would remain a free Black woman,” Mason said. “I thank everyone whose dedication and support carried me through this time and look forward to celebrating this moment with my family and friends.”

The Second Court of Appeals initially upheld her conviction but two years ago was instructed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the evidence against Mason, saying that the lower court had “erred by failing to require proof that [Mason] had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release.”

“We are relieved for Ms. Mason, who has waited for too long with uncertainty about whether she would be imprisoned and separated from her family for five years simply for trying to do her civic duty,” said Thomas Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas. “The harms of the criminal prosecution can never fully be undone, but this decision is vindication for Ms. Mason and a win for our democracy, which can only thrive when people can fearlessly engage in the civic process.”

[…]

In its 2022 ruling, the Court of Criminal Appeals held that Texas election law requires individuals to know they are ineligible to vote to be convicted of illegal voting. The law had been clarified by lawmakers in 2021 with additions to the election code stating Texans may not be convicted of voting illegally “solely upon the fact that the person signed a provisional ballot,” and instead required other evidence to corroborate they knowingly tried to cast an unlawful vote.

The appeals court wrote in its 2022 decision that the new law showed that that lawmakers never intended to convict a voter with good intentions.

“To construe the statute to mean that a person can be guilty even if she does not ‘know the person is not eligible to vote’ is to disregard the words the Legislature intended,” the court wrote. “It turns the knowledge requirement into a sort of negligence scheme wherein a person can be guilty because she fails to take reasonable care to ensure that she is eligible to vote.”

Thursday’s decision by the Tarrant County court acknowledged that.

“We conclude that the quantum of the evidence presented in this case is insufficient to support the conclusion that Mason actually realized that she voted knowing that she was ineligible to do so and, therefore, insufficient to support her conviction for illegal voting,” the decision reads.

See here, here, and here for the background, and here for all previous coverage. This should be the end of the very long line. It’s hard for me to see how Tarrant County could try again to convict her – I assume that double jeopardy would attach, if nothing else – but I Am Not A Lawyer, so perhaps I’m missing something. Assuming I am right, this is a big win for justice that took way too long to happen. Be that as it may, I am thrilled for Crystal Mason and I wish her nothing but the best going forward.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Appeals court upholds injunction that halted DFPS investigations of trans kids’ families

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Today, the Texas Court of Appeals, Third District, upheld injunctions in two related cases against the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) and Commissioner Masters, barring them from implementing the agency’s rule expanding the definition of child abuse to presumptively treat the provision of gender-affirming care as child abuse.

The injunctions bar DFPS from implementing the rule by investigating these families based solely on allegations that they are providing gender-affirming care to their adolescents, or taking any action in open investigations other than to close them so long DFPS can do so without making further contact with the families.

Today’s ruling came in two lawsuits, Doe v. Abbott and PFLAG v. Abbott, filed by Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project, the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, the ACLU of Texas, and the law firm of Baker Botts LLP.

“Texas PFLAG families are grateful that the court has once again recognized the harm caused by investigating parents for affirming and loving their transgender kids,” said Brian K. Bond (he/him), CEO of PFLAG National. “PFLAG National and our members and supporters will continue leading with love, just as we’ve done for the last 51 years, because when courageous love takes action, our families are stronger, our communities are safer, and our LGBTQ+ loved ones across races, places, and genders thrive.”

“We are gratified that the Court upheld the district court’s injunctions protecting families of transgender young people across the state from unlawful investigations under the DFPS rule,” said Paul D. Castillo, Senior Counsel, Lambda Legal. “The Court recognized yet again that being subjected to an unlawful and unwarranted investigation causes irreparable harm for these families who are doing nothing more than caring for and affirming their children and seeking the best course of care for them in consultation with their medical providers.”

“Transgender youth have always existed and always will, and the vast majority of Texans do not support separating them from their families or taking away their life-saving health care,” said Ash Hall (they/them), LGBTQIA+ Policy and Advocacy Strategist with the ACLU of Texas. “The maneuvers by Texas state officials against transgender youth are bullying masquerading as policy. Nothing could be further from abuse than parents loving and supporting their transgender children. This decision is another much-needed victory for trans youth and those who love and support them.”

“We are grateful the court saw through this dangerous and transparently discriminatory action by Texas officials,” said Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “Our clients and countless families like theirs are guided by love and compassion for their transgender youth, following the guidance of their doctors and fighting for the futures their family deserves. These baseless and invasive investigations are a dangerous abuse of the state’s power and one we’re thankful the Texas courts have consistently ruled against.”

Read today’s decisions here: PFLAG-Decision.pdf (lambdalegal.org) and Doe-Decision.pdf (lambdalegal.org)

Read more about the two lawsuits here: https://www.lambdalegal.org/in-court/cases/pflag-v-abbott and https://www.lambdalegal.org/in-court/cases/doe-v-abbott

Read more about PFLAG and its support of transgender youth and Texas families: https://pflag.org/resource/texas-faq/

See here and here for some background, and here for a statement from Amber Briggle, one of the parents/plaintiffs. This is a nice companion to the injunction in the other PFLAG lawsuit, and as with that I didn’t see any news coverage of it as I drafted the post. I’ll update with a link when I find one. This will of course go to SCOTx, and I’m less optimistic there, not to mention that the next Legislature can affect things even more. But for now, a reason to be happy.

UPDATE: And here’s KXAN with the story.

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The continuing problems of At Large-only school boards

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Houston Landing take a look at the big picture.

In Katy and several Houston-area districts, school boards have employed an election system — known as “at-large districts” — that has contributed to most trustees living in wealthier neighborhoods, a Houston Landing review of election records shows. As a result, many families and students in lower-income areas have had no nearby board members representing their interests.

In Pasadena, four of the district’s seven trustees live within 1 ½ miles of each other. In Spring Branch, an overwhelming majority of trustees have lived in wealthier neighborhoods south of Interstate 10 over the past decade. And trustees in Humble have typically lived anywhere but their district’s less-affluent areas.

School boards have enabled this phenomenon by using at-large districts, in which elected officials are chosen by voters throughout the district.

While school boards haven’t explicitly tried to exclude candidates from less-affluent areas, the at-large system has had that effect in several districts. That’s largely because voter turnout is typically stronger in higher-income areas, where residents often support their neighbors for elected office.

Other school boards, meanwhile, have embraced an alternative known as “single-member districts,” which breaks up a school district into smaller geographic areas, with one elected official chosen by residents of each area.

The single-member approach doesn’t guarantee a high-functioning school board. Houston ISD, which uses the setup, has been marred for years by trustees from different factions of the city fighting each other.

“I think (geographic representation) is important, but … I really want the best person for the position,” said Shawn Miller, who lives on the historically underrepresented north side of Katy and lost his bid for the school board in 2023. “If that means two people from the same area for the two top candidates, then so be it.”

But supporters of the single-member system argue it produces elected officials who more intimately understand the needs of underrepresented neighborhoods. Campbell said Katy trustees would be better positioned to address student behavior challenges at Paetow High, which reported the most fights and in-school suspensions in the district last school year, if more board members lived near the campus.

“It’s easy to feel isolated,” he said. “Like I want the best for my kid, but am I the only one?”

A lack of geographic representation has persisted for years across several of Houston’s largest school districts.

Katy serves over 90,000 students at 72 campuses across the suburbs west of Houston. The fast-growing, rapidly diversifying district stretches over 180 square miles, with many of its Black, Hispanic and lower-income students attending schools on the north side of Interstate 10.

Yet today, only one of Katy’s seven school board members lives north of the highway. Since 2014, no trustee has lived in the boundaries of three high schools — Paetow, Mayde Creek and Morton Ranch — that rank lower on the state’s academic accountability system.

“The makeup of the board certainly does not reflect or seem to reflect the entire district,” said Scott Martin, who centered his 2018 school board campaign around switching election systems when his neighborhood on the district’s east side lacked a local representative. “If I had a problem or an issue, it wasn’t at all obvious to me who I would have called about it.”

Pasadena Independent School District covers 85 square miles in southeast Harris County, spanning from the refineries dotting Highway 225 to middle-class subdivisions on the district’s burgeoning west side. Nearly 50,000 students attend the Hispanic-majority district, about 80 percent of whom are considered economically disadvantaged by the state.

Despite Pasadena’s wide expanse, the district’s school board representation has been concentrated in the middle of the district, where every trustee but one has lived within a three-mile radius over the last decade.

Most strikingly, four current trustees reside within 1 ½ miles of each other. District budgets and county property records show the average home appraisal value in their neighborhoods range from about $325,000 to $350,000 — well above the district-wide average of about $200,000.

“No one takes responsibility in representing you,” said Yen Rabe, a former Pasadena teacher who ran unsuccessfully for the school board in 2019 and 2021. “When people run against that tight-knit group, they don’t win. … When you go to the board meetings, you’ll see everybody votes the same way.”

There’s more, so read the rest. Be sure to look at the included maps like the one I embedded above, they’re pretty striking. I’ve been an advocate for more single-member districts in cities and school boards precisely for this reason. It’s everywhere you look – before the city of Austin finally switched to single member districts for their City Council, it was the case that the large majority of their Council members only ever came from a handful of neighborhoods. That’s just not representative government. In addition, this is often associated with racial disparities in Council or Board memberships; that too was the case in Austin, and in Farmers Branch, and is the central allegation in the current lawsuits in Houston and Spring Branch.

One argument against single member districts for school boards is that school board members are supposed to represent and advocate for the school district as a whole, and that having members represent geographic areas can end up with them pitted against each other. Evan Mintz makes a version of this argument in the CityCast Houston podcast from March 8 when this story is discussed. It’s a fair point but the flip side of it is that many schools are often less visible to board members who don’t live near them, and they wind up on the short end of the stick because no one is advocating for them. Scott Martin’s point about not knowing who to call if one has a problem is another issue with at large-only systems.

That doesn’t mean that they have to be single member district only. A mix of single member districts and At Large representation, like Houston and Pasadena do for their City Councils, can make sense. This allows for members who explicitly represent the system as a whole and who can also serve as backup members for each district as needed. But imagine living north of I-10 in Katy ISD or Spring Branch ISD. Would you feel like your voice was being heard? It’s hard to see how.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The continuing problems of At Large-only school boards

More on the Paxton deal

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This Chron story goes into some detail about how we ended up with the deferred adjudication deal that brought an abrupt end to the Ken Paxton securities fraud trial.

Still a crook any way you look

Special prosecutors assigned to the case said years-long procedural delays made it especially hard to win at trial. One of the alleged victims died while the case was ongoing.

“Criminal cases aren’t like fine wine,” said special prosecutor Brian Wice. “They do not get better with age.”

The case was “makeable,” said Kent Schaffer, who withdrew from the prosecution last month, but he and Wice estimated their odds of winning had been about 50-50. That’s why Schaffer said he resurfaced a discussion about a deal with the defense six weeks ago, just before he left.

In recent weeks, Wice and his new co-counsel, Jed Silverman, had narrowed their focus to two more severe felony charges after a key witness, appeared ready to side with Paxton on a third, which accused him of failing to register as an investment adviser.

Wice said they started reading interviews and re-interviewing nearly a dozen witnesses last month, some of whom “hadn’t been interviewed since the Obama administration.”

“As a result of that intensive interviewing and re-interviewing process, we had a sense of what these cases were — more importantly, what they weren’t,” Wice said.

The key witness, Paxton’s former friend and business associate Frederick “Fritz” Mowery, had already testified a decade ago to the Texas State Securities Board that he was the one who erred in not registering Paxton as a security adviser. Following a 2014 investigation, the board reprimanded Paxton and fined him $1,000 for the violation.

Wice acknowledged that testimony was technically public record but said they didn’t learn of the details until a month ago when Silverman re-interviewed the witness. Silverman said the interview elicited a “level of detail that would make it considerably harder for a jury to believe” Paxton knowingly broke the law.

Silverman and Wice described in interviews how the investment-related charges had a clear victim and a clear path to justice, unlike the registration charge, which Silverman described as “really an administrative matter.” Silverman said the victims told prosecutors their top priority was being made whole financially, and as lawyers, they were obligated to take that to heart.

Schaffer said most of the witnesses in the case were hostile to the prosecution and friendly with Paxton. He said the prosecution planned to show in court that Paxton had excelled in a securities course when he was licensed as proof that he should have known better.

Still, he said, there was no knowing if a jury might take pity on Paxton — that they would know he’s guilty but decide that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

“To not fill a form out from the state because you thought your federal form was sufficient? And it was (sufficient) up until three months ago?” Schaffer said. “You know, some jurors may feel kind of like look, nobody got harmed. You didn’t do it correctly. He did pay a civil penalty. He’s been punished enough.”

Schaffer added that the charge accusing Paxton of misleading investors might also have been difficult to prove because the law isn’t “crystal clear” about what a person soliciting investments is supposed to tell a potential investor, and Paxton allegedly didn’t lie outright, he lied by omission.

In his view, pretrial diversion was a way prosecutors could make sure there were some guaranteed consequences for Paxton, and it also implied guilt.

“It sends a signal to anybody who is paying attention that this guy obviously did what he’s accused of doing or he wouldn’t be entering into that agreement,” Schaffer said.

See here for the previous update, about the deal being made. This subsequent story has more details.

The lead prosecutor in Ken Paxton’s securities fraud case was scrambling in recent months to push back the trial date and find local district attorneys who could help him present a convincing argument to the jury.

The April 15 trial date set by Harris County Judge Andrea Beall was quickly approaching after years of delays and an attempt by Paxton’s team to have the charges dismissed for lack of a speedy trial was still pending.

Brian Wice, the lead private attorney appointed to prosecute Paxton, told Hearst Newspapers he and defense attorney Dan Cogdell agreed they were not going to be ready by that date and decided to set a meeting with Beall on Valentine’s Day to ask to move the trial to September. The judge flatly rejected them.

[…]

As Schaffer considered leaving the case in February, he approached Cogdell about a possible deal allowing Paxton to have the charges dropped.

At the time, restitution payments to the victims were not part of the discussion, Cogdell said, though he expected it likely would have come up if negotiations with Schaffer had continued. Wice was adamant that restitution be included.

Without a consensus and with his compensation still in question, Schaffer, an experienced trial and criminal defense lawyer who has represented high-profile clients like music artist Travis Scott, withdrew from the case.

That left Wice in a bind. Though also a veteran criminal defense lawyer, his expertise is in appellate law, and he hasn’t tried a case on his own in decades.

“That’s not my skillset,” Wice said. “That’s Kent’s skillset. Pound for pound, he’s one of the best trial lawyers in the Western Hemisphere.”

That was the point at which Wice began reaching out to various DA’s offices for assistance, according to the story. There are some disagreements with those offices about how that all went, so read for yourself. There were a lot of factors that led us to this conclusion, none of which should be confused for Paxton being anything but the crooked little shit that he is. In that first story at the end, Attorney Schaffer expressed his optimism in that San Antonio grand jury, to which all I can say is from your lips to God’s ear, sir. Read both of these or read this Reform Austin summary and see what you think.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hardy Toll Road connector approved

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s a very different project than what was first proposed.

A planned extension of the Hardy Toll Road through the Near Northside into downtown Houston will proceed, but with various community-driven design elements.

Harris County Commissioners on Tuesday approved a plan by the Harris County Toll Road Authority for the extension from Loop 610 to the Elysian Viaduct near Interstate 10. Toll authority officials previously said it could be four years before construction of the long-proposed toll road extension is complete.

Despite being a tollway project, commissioners cheered the efforts to make the road more palatable to the community and add elements such as park space, bike trails, community meeting facilities, sound walls and trees that are much-needed in the Near Northside.

[…]

After county officials balked at a 2020 proposal for the extension, citing neighborhood concerns, HCTRA spent two years holding public meetings in the community and adding amenities to the project based on what residents said they wanted. Those discussion led to a number of changes, including:

  • An entrance and exit to the tollway at Cavalcade, so residents have some access to the tollway for their own use, rather than it simply running unimpeded through the area.
  • Green spaces both next to and on top of the tollway where it will be depressed, with parking beneath the portion of the road that will be elevated to increase access to the parks but shield the parking lots.
  • A HCTRA building planned for the agency’s IT offices in the area open to the community for public meetings and possibly classes.

“This project has morphed into something the community does support,” said HCTRA Executive Director Roberto Treviño.

Treviño said Monday he expects HCTRA to build many of the items the community sought prior to the tollway construction.

Despite the commitments, concerns remain that the amenities shroud what is still a large road to serve vehicle trips.

“Like many environmental justice communities, the Near Northside has been repeatedly asked to bear the burden of air pollution sources like highways,” said Jennifer Hadayia, executive director of Air Alliance Houston. “Unfortunately, this new highway will add even more air pollution to the community… Near Northside deserves investments like parks, recreation facilities and affordable housing without a four-lane highway going through the neighborhood.”

To address some of the concerns, county officials approved HCTRA’s plan, but also told the agency to work with Metropolitan Transit Authority, Harris County Pollution Control and other agencies to monitor and mitigate pollution, ensure the project does not displace affordable housing and offer improved transit.

See here for some background and here for a preview story in the Chron. As I said, this is a very different project now than what was first proposed, which was basically just highway through the neighborhood. It’s a little hard for me to imagine this much accommodation for the residents of those neighborhoods being made in the old days. Doesn’t mean this is a perfect project, doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to oppose it, just that where there’s a responsive government, we’ve come a long way. That’s worth noticing.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, March 29 edition

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: Ken Paxton gets off with a slap on the wrist; repercussions from the election including a Big Lie-inspired recount in my state house district; infrastructure problems in the Metroplex both physical and online; Dallas bond and charter updates; Dallas courts news; immigration stories; eclipsonomics; Black history in Fort Worth; what happened to jalapenos; and a gorilla baby leaves the Fort Worth Zoo to find a foster mom.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of CAKE, who are coming through Texas in September, and whose Dallas concert I am buying tickets for Friday morning.

The biggest Metroplex-associated story this week is, of course, Collin County’s favorite boy skating one more time with a fine, community service, and legal ethics education as a plea deal for securities fraud, as noted by our host earlier this week. Like most of us, I’m disappointed, and believe the man is a crook even if even the law never catches up with him. The DMN and Star-Telegram have some opinions (negative) about this action. According to the Dallas Observer, Paxton will be doing his community service in Collin County, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for news about what he’s up to. What does it all mean? Texas Standard has some early guesses.

In other news:

  • Our favorite junior senator wants senior government officials to get police escort through the airport, and on the one hand, in the world Ted Cruz helped make, there are a lot of people in Congress and election administrators who probably need that help. On the other hand, we all know he’s still mad he got spotted running off to Cancun and that’s what he cares about.
  • D Magazine has a Q&A with Colin Allred about his campaign for Cruz’s seat.
  • Before we get to the next election, we have to get through with the last one. Local Wilks and Dunn candidate Barry Wernick, who ran against incumbent Morgan Meyer in HD 108 (where I live) in the Republican primary, is asking for a recount in the election. He’s not trying to overturn the election, just wanting to “an effort to expose flaws, if any, inherent in the current election systems and to protect future elections”. Wernick lost the election by a few more than 500 votes, so wanting a recount makes sense. But given who paid for his run and who endorsed him (TFG), this looks less like a request for a recount in a narrow race and more like a Big Lie potshot at Dallas elections, and specifically at our new elections administrator, Heider Garcia, who was run out of Tarrant County by Big Lie proponent Tim O’Hare when he took over as County Judge there.
  • The DMN has an op-ed by State Rep. Kronda Thimesch, who was primaried out over the Paxton impeachment, on Republican infighting and dark money liars. I’m sympathetic about the dark money and the lying, but there’s a bit of Face-Eating Leopards in this complaint.
  • Related, the Star-Telegram’s Nicole Russell isn’t happy about the Christian/evangelical embrace of Christian Nationalism. I’m pretty sure she’s right about that not being what Jesus said, at least as I remember my readings from Bible class, but good luck getting the folks who need to hear that to listen.
  • Also related: the Texas Tribune on the race to succeed state GOP chair Matt Rinaldi, including the North Texas candidate considered his chosen successor. The article mentions the domestic violence call we talked about recently.
  • And, also related: Mark Steger in Richardson complaining about his gerrymandered state rep, who is a tool of Wilks and Dunn, whose fingerprints are all over the sorry state of politics in Texas. I feel for Steger; I used to be in Lance Gooden’s congressional district in the same sort of arrangement. But it’s not going to change until we throw the lot of them out of office.
  • Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth, who’s retiring at the end of her current term, is stepping down as the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
  • Earlier this week, Dallas City Council went into closed session to discuss “Project X”, a business prospect they don’t want to tell us about. Like our friends at D Magazine, I wonder if it’s related to keeping the Mavericks in Dallas.
  • According to an independent, nonpartisan survey, five of the most-travelled structurally-deficient bridges in Texas are in Dallas. These bridges don’t merely need repairs; “one of [their] key elements is in poor or worse condition”. Yikes.
  • Also in the damaged infrastructure department: turns out the reason the Tarrant County Appraisal District web site went down last week was a ransomware attack. The hackers are demanding a $700,000 ransom. In Tarrant County and wondering what information the hackers might have on you? The Star-Telegram has you covered.
  • The City of Dallas is also transitioning to a new web site for their utilities, including our water bill. How’s it going? We didn’t get the email with the information to log into our account (which we will eventually need anyway); don’t have the account information trivially available since we’re paperless customers and it’s all locked up in the old web site; called to get them to resend the email; went through the phone tree to get told we had to talk to a human; punched 0 to get to a human; and got hung up on. We filed a request with 311 but there has to be an better way to handle errant emails.
  • It’s all but official that T.C. Broadnax is going to the city manager job in Austin. He says the chance at the Austin job came at the perfect time, which, given how well Mayor Johnson has been governing since he officially switched parties, is more like a little late.
  • The city of Dallas is about to make construction more expensive for both commercial and residential projects. Apparently building fees have been low and they’re not supporting the permitting process. Some fees will triple but the largest increase is almost 2500% and that’s not a typo. This is the sort of boring story that doesn’t get a lot of coverage but has long-term effects.
  • One of Dallas County’s judges has more than 100 felony jury trials set for the week of April 1. This is apparently an effort to get back out from under the delays to her docket from COVID. The DMN is displeased. Presumably only one or two of these cases are actually going to trial. The best guess is this is an effort to force prosecutors and defense attorneys to strike plea deals, which is at best questionably just. The DMN also has analysis of the bar poll from 2023 and unsurprisingly, Givens is the lowest-rated felony judge.
  • The blowup around whether or not the police oversight board in Dallas can actually do anything may result in the watchdogs reporting to city council rather than the city manager in the charter election in November. I’ll vote for that.
  • A Sharon Grigsby analysis in the DMN of a proposal to put parks and recreation under City Council suggests it’s politics and not dissatisfaction with the amenities underlying the proposed change. At least in north Dallas, though the parks are expanding below I-30 as well. I learned a lot about how the Parks Department works, which is why I linked it instead of just saying the charter review commission turned the proposal down. One of the other things the Parks Department is doing is temporarily managing Old City Park while the city figures out what to do with its oldest park and the historic buildings there.
  • White Rock Lake has reopened after the sewage spill but tests show E. coli in the lake. I’m planning to go down to the lake for the eclipse next week but I’m not getting too close to the water.
  • D Magazine has a piece on the longlist for the City of Dallas bonds in the May election. There may still be some changes. Early voting on the bonds starts April 22.
  • When the state ties the hands of local government, this is what it looks like: Arlington City Council approving natural gas drilling expansion against the interests and wishes of its constituents.
  • I report police settlements not because I think the Metroplex is worse than other parts of the state, but because I want folks to realize how regularly we spend money to pay for cops behaving badly and how much money it is: Fort Worth City Council approved a $150,000 settlement for police misconduct. The case relied in part on a third-party report in 2022 that found a pattern of unnecessary use of force.
  • The Texas Tribune has a nice exploration of the bus depot in Longview. East Texas is not really my purview but I did want to bring it to people’s attention because it’s worth a read.
  • There’s a drive-thru McDonald’s in downtown Dallas and its permit is due for renewal. There’s going to be a fight about it that’s really a fight about the future of downtown. Part of the broader set of concerns is the store is near the Greyhound depot that’s closing later this year, which will change the driving vs walking calculus in the area significantly.
  • Here are a couple of immigration stories I’d like to bring to your attention. One is about how the feds are spending $50 million to cut visa wait times and passport backlogs. One of the issues with visa wait times is it costs the US a lot of tourism money, including some that will come to Dallas with the FIFA World Cup matches. The other is a heartbreaking tale about family separation that doesn’t go where you might expect.
  • Speaking of FIFA, D Magazine has some early news about logistics.
  • How about logistics for an event coming up much sooner than 2026? Apparently porta-potties are in short supply for the eclipse on April 8. Texas Standard also has some numbers about the economic impact of the eclipse.
  • This week I learned that Dallas saw its first eclipse in 1878. The scientists who came to Dallas to make observations were also trying to find out whether a planet called “Vulcan” between Mercury and the sun actually existed.
  • Another thing I learned this week is that “the father of Black baseball” played for a Fort Worth Negro League team in the early part of the twentieth century. I’m not a baseball person, but I didn’t need to be to get a lot from this story.
  • I also learned a lot from the Texas Observer’s deep dive into the history of a lynching in Fort Worth in 1921.
  • Grandmother of Juneteenth Opal Lee participated in the rebuilding of her childhood home in Fort Worth last week. The original house on the site was destroyed by a racist mob in 1939.
  • Are jalapenos blander or are you just getting old? Actually, you were right the first time: jalapenos are less spicy than they used to be and Aggies are to blame.
  • There was a big auction of movie memorabilia from the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain here in Dallas and the top prize was the door from Titanic, which went for $718,750. Personally I would have spent my fantasy money on Indiana Jones’ bullwhip, which would only have set me back $525,000.
  • Poor gorilla baby Jameela, born earlier this year by a C-section, struck out with her second foster mother and is moving from Fort Worth to Cleveland where zookeepers hope an experience foster gorilla mom will bond with her. Good luck, Jameela! And because I don’t want you to leave feeling sad, click through and look at this video of Korbel, the Fort Worth zoo’s baby giraffe, who sure is cute.
Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Dispatches from Dallas, March 29 edition

Fifth Circuit leaves SB4 block in place

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

A federal appeals panel late Tuesday night declined to put Texas’s migrant deportation law back in effect, saying the state law seizes powers that are “likely reserved to the United States.”

The 2-1 opinion from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals keeps the law on hold while a broader legal battle plays out over the constitutionality of the state’s new immigration enforcement scheme. The appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case next week.

But the lengthy early ruling from the conservative appeals court is a sign of the uphill battle Texas Republicans face in convincing the courts the law, known as Senate Bill 4, does not run afoul of more than a century of precedent leaving immigration enforcement in the hands of the federal government.

Chief Judge Priscilla Richman wrote that even as the state is “nobly and admirably” trying to fill a “gaping void” in immigration enforcement left by a lack of funding and political will in D.C., “it is unlikely that Texas can step into the shoes of the national sovereign under our Constitution and laws.”

“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of noncitizens — is exclusively a federal power,” Richman wrote. “Despite this fundamental axiom, SB4 creates separate, distinct state criminal offenses and related procedures regarding unauthorized entry of noncitizens into Texas from outside the country and their removal.”

The one judge on the panel to rule in Texas’s favor said the decision likely means the law will never take effect.

“We’ll likely never know how Texas’s state courts and its state law-enforcement officers would have implemented SB4,” Judge Andrew S. Oldham wrote.

[…]

Richman repeatedly pointed to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that held that only the federal government has the power to enforce immigration laws. In that case, the high court struck down portions of an Arizona law that authorized police to arrest anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

Richman said the Arizona ruling provides “considerable guidance” on whether Texas can succeed. She wrote that the Supreme Court in that case explained that a “principal feature” of the federal removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials. Those officials can decide whom to deport, and migrants can seek asylum or other forms of relief at any point in the process.

SB4’s provisions empowering state officials to make those decisions, Richman wrote, “significantly impair the exercise of discretion by federal immigration officials.”

“The broadest exercise of federal discretion is the Executive’s decision not to pursue either civilly or criminally the very noncitizens whom Texas has drawn a bead upon in enacting new state laws,” she wrote. “The discretion to pursue these same noncitizens likely lies exclusively with the Executive.”

See here for the previous update. This is what we’ve been saying all along, and at this point I’d expect the upcoming hearing on the merits of the initial injunction go along similar lines. The question as ever is what SCOTUS will do with it, whether they’ll respect this precedent, barely a decade old, or throw it out because there are different Justices on the bench now and the Republican Party really cares about this. We’ll find out eventually. The Associated Press, Law Dork, and the Current have more.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Controller Hollins puts firefighter settlement tab at up to $1.3 billion

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

That’s once you factor in interest payments over the life of the bonds that will be issued to cover this.

Mayor John Whitmire

Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s proposed settlement with the firefighters union could cost significantly more than previously advertised, City Controller Chris Hollins said Tuesday.

The total cost of a back-pay settlement with the city’s firefighters could be $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion after taking into account interest and fees, Hollins said.

In addition, the total extra cost of a forward-looking, five-year contract with the firefighters’ union could exceed $140 million, according to the controller.

Hollins declined to weigh in on whether he thinks the settlement is fair, but his take on the settlement cost underscores the heavy hit to taxpayers from the deal that Whitmire struck earlier this month.

[…]

Hollins said his assessment of whether the deal is sound will hinge on a comparison of Houston firefighter pay to counterparts in other cities in Texas. He still is waiting on that analysis from the Whitmire administration, he said.

Whitmire has yet to release a detailed plan of how to pay for the firefighter settlement. Administration officials have broached the idea of instituting a garbage collection fee or creating an exception to the city’s property tax revenue cap to pay for the Houston police and fire departments, which make up the lion’s share of the city’s operating expenses.

Both of those ideas are worth exploring, Hollins said at his Tuesday news conference. He said the city cannot meet its mounting obligations through cost-cutting measures alone.

Adding the firefighter settlement to the city’s structural deficit, Houston soon will be on the hook for an extra $230 to $280 million dollars in expenses per year, Hollins said.

See here for the previous entry in this series. Mayor Whitmire still hasn’t provided a plan, and while it’s reasonable to give a topline figure for the total cost, there really will be a lot paid out in interest over the years. A million bucks twenty years from now is worth less than a million bucks today, but it still has to be paid. I don’t have a problem with that, but the line that this settlement was needed because the cost of losing to the firefighters in court would have been a lot more is at least a little disingenuous, in that the city could have prevailed in that lawsuit. I don’t know enough to know what the chances are of that or what a decent risk analysis would look like, the point is that the firefighters didn’t agree to a settlement out of a sense of civic duty, they did so because their risk analysis suggested the city made a worthwhile offer to them, taking into account the possibility they could lose or just not get as much if they won. It’s all a calculation.

It’s fair to say the city was going to have to pay something when the court case was done, and whatever you thought of the merits of the case there’s value in knowing what that amount is so a plan could be made for it. It’s just that, you know, now we have to make those plans. And they have to be made in the context of a budget outlook that is now worse because of it.

Houston Controller Chris Hollins has projected a budget shortfall of $230 to $280 million for the upcoming fiscal year, warning that the city’s savings cannot sustain the extra costs from the latest firefighters’ deal beyond another year.

[…]

Combining debt repayments, interest and planned salary hikes, the city’s budget is bracing for an additional cost of $70 to $80 million in the next fiscal year that starts in July. This is on top of an already projected deficit of $160 to $200 million that does not account for the impact of the firefighters’ agreement, Hollins said.

“This is a long-standing pattern that the city for years and years has been spending on a recurring basis more than is brought in,” Hollins said during a Tuesday press conference. “You start to look at the numbers and they pile up, and it’s my job to at some point say, ‘hey, we can no longer foot this bill.’”

Whitmire’s team has proposed potentially adjusting the city’s property tax revenue cap, charging a garbage fee and implementing 5% budget cuts across most city departments as potential ways to cut down expenses and generate new revenues.

Hollins said he has long advocated for removing the revenue cap and is open to exploring the addition of a garbage fee, noting Houston is the only major city in Texas without one. He said, however, that he does not support large-scale budget cuts or layoffs that would undermine essential city services such as water provision, trash collection and road safety projects.

“These are fundamental necessities that residents expect, depend on and pay for with their tax dollars,” he said. “We were elected with a mandate to not only maintain but to improve the quality of critical city services…and we must uphold that responsibility.”

I too have long advocated for getting rid of the stupid revenue cap, and I look forward to Mayor Whitmire making that case. It’s just too bad this has to wait until 2026, because we could use it now. Or, really, anytime in the past. But here we are.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

House Ethics Committee investigating Rep. Troy Nehls

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Could be something. We’ll see.

Rep. Troy Nehls

U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Richmond, is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, the bipartisan panel announced Tuesday. It did not specify the focus of the investigation, but Nehls said it was related to his campaign’s finances.

The committee announced it was digging into a matter reported to its members on Dec. 11 and it will announce how it will proceed by May 10. Investigations do not indicate that there have been any proven violations of ethics rules.

Nehls said in a statement Tuesday that he would cooperate with the committee.

“My campaign has complied with every Federal Election Commission (FEC) law, and my books are open,” he said.

The committee is made up of five Democrats and five Republicans, with U.S. Rep. Michael Guest, R-Mississippi, serving as the chair. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, is the only Texan on the committee. Guest and ranking member Susan Wild, D-Pennsylvania, jointly agreed to pursue the investigation.

Nehls is known for his colorful personality on Capitol Hill, which has often led to controversy.

[…]

Nehls’ campaign reported losing over $150,000 last year in wire fraud last year, prompting an investigation by the Federal Election Commission. The campaign was able to recover over $130,000 of the stolen funds, which were reportedly sent to a mysterious entity, “Misty J Productions.”

Before Congress, Nehls was fired in 1998 as an officer with the Richmond Police Department after several violations to department policy, including mishandling evidence and disobeying orders.

That bit about him having a “colorful personality” is a polite way of saying he’s a huge asshole. Whatever this investigation is about, we’ll know more in May. Recent such cases have ranged from George Santos, who famously ended up being ejected from Congress for sins too numerous to mention, to Pat Fallon, whose case was closed with no action being taken. We’ll see where this one ends up.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of March 25

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance doesn’t want to think about California bookies as it brings you this week’s roundup.

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Paxton gets his deal

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Welp.

Still a crook any way you look

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will have his felony securities fraud charges dismissed in exchange for doing 100 hours of community service and meeting other requirements, according to a last-minute deal announced Tuesday.

The agreement requires Paxton, 61, to complete 15 hours of legal ethics classes and pay about $300,000 in restitution to the victims. Over the coming 18 months, Paxton cannot violate the law or he could again face trial, and he will have to check in with special prosecutors every 60 days in a virtual appointment.

The resolution — altogether announced, signed and entered within a seven-minute hearing in a Houston court — marks a sudden conclusion to a nearly decade-long legal battle that has clouded the third-term Republican’s tenure as the state’s top lawyer and threatened to scuttle his political ambitions. And it comes less than a year after he survived an impeachment attempt on unrelated corruption claims that the FBI is reportedly still investigating.

Paxton was present Tuesday alongside his lawyers, and calmly watched as the Harris County judge agreed to the terms, saying nothing other than to confirm his signature. The deal does not require him to admit any wrongdoing.

“I am grateful to reach this agreement, to get this matter behind me, so I can get back to the work representing the state of Texas,” Paxton said in a statement Tuesday.

The culmination of one of the longest-running cases in Texas history came roughly three weeks before Paxton was set to go to trial on April 15.

[…]

“At the end of the day, it’s not a plea bargain,” Dan Cogdell, one of Paxton’s defense attorneys, told reporters after the hearing. “There is no admission of guilt and there will never be an admission of guilt because he is not guilty.”

Cogdell said it was a case “we knew, from day one, they couldn’t prove,” adding that the restitution Paxton will pay is less than he’d pay for his defense team to go to trial.

Special prosecutor Brian Wice said he agreed to a deal because it would bring justice to the victims, and his obligation was always to find a fair resolution, not necessarily to convict Paxton.

“While I think the case could be made that justice was certainly delayed,” Wice said, “I think the agreement that we’ve reached today underscores the fact that justice was not denied.”

[…]

The same allegations of bribery and abuse of office that spurred his impeachment are reportedly being investigated by a federal grand jury in San Antonio. Paxton also continues to face a whistleblower suit filed by four of his former top aides who claim he fired them out of retaliation for reporting him to the FBI for those allegations.

In another case still winding its way through the courts, a committee of the State Bar of Texas is seeking to take disciplinary action against Paxton for filing a “dishonest” petition before the U.S. Supreme Court that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election result.

[…]

Paxton’s community service, the particulars of which prosecutors and defense attorneys will decide together, will be completed in Collin County, where Paxton lives. Wice said it will likely involve a soup kitchen or food pantry.

Paxton will take 15 hours of continuing legal education as part of the agreement — five times more than what an attorney licensed in Texas is required to do, Wice said.

“You can never get too many hours of ethics.”

See here for the update that let us know this was coming. After all these years, I confess I didn’t expect this to end with such a whimper, but here we are. I’ll be rooting very hard for that grand jury in San Antonio to give us something, that’s for sure. And however this ends, I’ll never stop referring to Paxton as a crook. Some things don’t require a conviction.

I’ll have some links for more reading in a minute, but first there’s this Trib story that maybe could have been run before now.

Cases like Paxton’s are typically prosecuted in civil court and would not result in jail time, said lawyers specializing in securities fraud. But state prosecutors have, for nine years, been pursuing charges against Paxton that held a maximum penalty of up to 99 years in jail.

“This is not really what people think of when they hear securities fraud,” said James Spindler, a professor of law and business at the University of Texas at Austin. “This is not Bernie Madoff or Sam Bankman-Fried,” who were both convicted of perpetrating billions of dollars worth of fraud.

[…]

Christine Hurt, a securities law professor at SMU Dedman School of Law, likened Paxton’s behavior to that of celebrity influencers like Kim Kardashian, who settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2022 after she promoted certain cryptocurrencies on social media without disclosing that she was receiving compensation to do so.

Paxton’s charges are expected to be dropped, based on a pre-trial agreement reached Tuesday, in exchange for community service, paying restitution to the alleged victims and other fulfillment of obligations laid out in the deal.

Lawyers who study securities law said that people accused of similar crimes often settle before trial by agreeing to pay a fine. They said it was highly unusual for the state to pursue criminal penalties for technical violations that one could feasibly commit unintentionally.

“We can hold you civilly liable, but typically if you weren’t doing something you thought was bad or wrong or reckless, you don’t have the requisite standard to be deprived of your liberty,” Spindler said. “That’s why this never really gets prosecuted in a criminal manner.”

[…]

Securities fraud refers to a broad range of behavior that can include running a Ponzi scheme, encouraging people to invest in a sham company, recruiting investors by telling them lies about a company, or insider trading.

Hurt, the SMU professor, said she moved to Texas about two years ago and when she heard Paxton faced securities fraud cases, she assumed the charges were more egregious. She was surprised to learn what the charges were when she looked into the case this week.

“I don’t want to downplay the severity of this,” Hurt said. “But these types of cases are usually settled for just a fine and are not career-ending sanctions.”

I mean, when every story that ever ran about Paxton’s state securities fraud charges includes the note that these charges can result in prison terms of 5 to 99 years if convicted, it’s hard for a layperson to recognize that in reality these things are often settled in the same manner as speeding tickets are. Perhaps that’s an unintentionally trenchant comment about how wildly punitive our laws are in general. Be that as it may, I presume that if that Paxton does get popped by that federal grand jury the “deferred” part of his prosecution comes back into play. (How it would be handled and by whom is a hypothetical best left unexplored at this time.) Of course, if that does happen he’ll have much bigger things to worry about. We can only hope.

For what it’s worth, the restitution Paxton will have to pay will go to the people he duped into buying Servergy stock on his say so back in the day. One of those people is now dead, so his estate will get the money. Here’s another question to ponder: What if any laws exist on the matter of campaign donors or other close personal friends of Paxton paying that restitution for him? We all know he’s not going to write those checks himself. I’m just putting it out there.

So that’s it for this saga. Whatever else I thought about this case over the last eight or nine years, this was not how I expected it to end. The Trib, Reform Austin, Daily Kos, Texas Public Radio, the Dallas Observer, and the Press have more.

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SCOTUS seems likely to dump the mifepristone ban case

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Some good news.

For this Supreme Court to reject abortion restrictions, the argument has to be pretty bad.

“That it?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett cut in tersely as anti-abortion group lawyer Erin Hawley (yes, that Hawley) enumerated the supposed harms to a group of doctors from the Food and Drug Administration lifting restrictions on abortion drug mifepristone.

Hawley on Tuesday was at times buried by a bipartisan dogpile as the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Barrett and even Clarence Thomas joined the liberals in questioning the group’s standing to bring the challenge and the nationwide restrictions it’s seeking.

Justice Samuel Alito, one of the most doggedly devoted members of the bench to reverse engineering even doily-like arguments into his preferred outcome, tried valiantly to put a gloss on the anti-abortion case.

Is the FDA “infallible?” he challenged the government. Isn’t it “obvious” that lifting multiple restrictions at once may have a different effect in combination, he mused, parroting the anti-abortion group’s argument. He sneered that the manufacturer of branded mifepristone’s injury is just monetary — a refreshingly dismissive take on corporate interest from a right-wing judge.

“So your argument is it doesn’t matter if FDA flagrantly violated the law, it didn’t do what it should have done, it endangered the health of women, it’s just too bad, nobody can sue in court?” he asked U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

But the fight went out of Alito as the arguments went on and it became clear that his peers were, at the least, highly suspect of the legal underpinnings of the challenge.

The other right-wing justices too, initially eager to at least throw a bone to the anti-abortion movement, had largely abandoned that posture by the time Hawley took the stand.

See here for the previous update. I’m just going to post a bunch of links at the end of this, but the one other piece I want to highlight is this one, in which we talk about what might be next.

There are always a couple of tells when the most conservative Supreme Court in more than a century finds itself adjudicating a truly mortifying and meritless case. One is that it’s coming up by way of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, a court that so consistently shovels its worst constitutional garbage upward that the high court conservatives are often forced to reluctantly lob it back. Another tell is when the facts of the case are so laugh-out-loud insane that even conservative justices can’t bring themselves to adopt them or the underpinning legal reasoning with a straight face. There’s yet a third tell: when the conservative justices start injecting a bunch of nonsense and randomized pet peeves into oral argument to distract from how embarrassing it would be to discuss the merits of the actual case.

All three tells were present Tuesday morning, when the court heard FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a challenge to the current medication abortion regime nationwide. This case is about a handful of physicians seeking to wield their “conscience objections” to abortion as a cudgel against everyone’s access to safe reproductive care throughout the country. So, it was heartening to see that the majority of the Supreme Court doesn’t have the conscience to take it seriously. It was harrowing, however, to hear at least two justices embrace the plaintiffs’ foundational theory: that a long-defunct federal law already bans medication abortion, and maybe procedural abortion as well—and that the courts can revive this ban once they get their hands on the right case.

[…]

Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas are never ones to let an embarrassment of a lawsuit go to waste. And they were openly eager to embrace the chilling argument at the heart of ADF’s case: the notion that the Comstock Act of 1873 prohibits the distribution of abortion pills and perhaps even equipment used for procedural abortions. Under this theory, abortion is already a criminal offense under federal law, and every abortion provider in the country may be prosecuted and imprisoned immediately. Conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation are already urging Trump to issue an executive order on Day 1 banning medication abortion. Republican lawyers are preparing to use the Comstock Act to prohibit all abortions, not just pills. This reading of the zombie relic is so broad that a Justice Department and judiciary hostile enough to reproductive freedom could contort it to make all abortion care a felony.

Predictably on Tuesday, and with a case built of vapors to work with, Alito and Thomas went full Comstock. Alito scolded the FDA for letting providers mail abortion pills despite the existence of the law. “This is a prominent provision,” the justice told Prelogar. “It’s not some obscure subsection of a complicated, obscure law. They knew about it. Everybody in this field knew about it.” Thomas warned Ellsworth that her client, the maker of mifepristone, lacked a “safe harbor” from prosecution over Comstock. “It’s fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours,” he told her. (That claim is very much in dispute.) Alito and Thomas know they will likely lose this case, so they’re preparing for the next one. Maybe Trump will win and commence Comstock prosecutions. Maybe Kacsmaryk will issue a new ban on mifepristone at the behest of red states, as he is currently threatening to do. Either way, Comstock is racing toward the Supreme Court. And two justices have already aligned themselves with a sweeping interpretation of its puritanical prohibitions.

The FDA looks poised to win this silly case at the Supreme Court in June, but we cannot let the case’s silliness obscure all the future damage it tees up—to the practice of medicine, to women’s health, and to the credibility of a Supreme Court that once cared about credibility. Whenever a door closes on the worst MAGA toxins at this court, an Overton window opens to something so much worse. Health care professionals, biopharma companies, and reproductive rights advocates can cheer the probable outcome of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. But they can spare only a moment’s rest because Thomas and Alito, with the help of bad actors like ADF and Kacsmaryk, are already bringing the next battle to their doorstep.

As that last link notes, it ain’t over till it’s over. And before you can draw a breath, it will be time for the EMTALA appeal. Gird yourselves. NBC News, SCOTUSblog, Mother Jones, and The 19th have more.

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Secretaries of State and AI

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I sure hope our SOS is ready for this.

A false call from a secretary of state telling poll workers they aren’t needed on Election Day. A fake video of a state election director shredding ballots before they’re counted. An email sent to a county election official trying to phish logins to its voter database.

Election officials worry that the rise of generative AI makes this kind of attack on the democratic process even easier ahead of the November election — and they’re looking for ways to combat it.

Election workers are uniquely vulnerable targets: They’re obscure enough that nobody knows who they really are, so unlike a fake of a more prominent figure — like Joe Biden or Donald Trump — people may not be on the lookout for something that seems off. At the same time, they’re important enough to fake and just public enough that it’d be easy to do.

Combine that with the fact that election officials are still broadly trusted by most Americans — but don’t have a way to effectively reach their voters — a well-executed fake of them could be highly dangerous but hard to counter.

“I 100 percent expect it to happen this cycle,” New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said of deepfake videos or other disinformation being spread about elections. “It is going to be prevalent in election communications this year.”

Secretaries of state gathered at the National Association of Secretaries of State winter meeting last month told POLITICO they have already begun working AI scenarios into their trainings with local officials, and that the potential dangers of AI-fueled misinformation will be featured in communication plans with voters.

Election officials have already spent the last few years struggling to figure out how to combat an increasingly toxic election environment in which misinformation has fueled public distrust of the electoral system and physical threats. Now they’re worried AI will make that challenge even more unmanageable.

“Our staff is in conversation with a lot of folks around the country,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who publicized a training late last year that included a deepfaked version of himself spreading false information. “It has a lot of potential to do a lot of damage.”

The technology has improved so rapidly that people often don’t realize how easily and effectively someone can be impersonated by AI. When the good-government group Brennan Center for Justice runs its election AI trainings — it helped arrange the one in Arizona — it shows them a tangible example of AI misinformation. After recording participants in the tabletop training exercise, the group then created and displayed deepfakes later in the training of the participants giving misleading messages to the public.

“To see it, as opposed to hearing about it, and to see it with people that you know or maybe even of yourself, brought home that this isn’t some science fiction,” said Lawrence Norden, the senior director of the group’s elections and government program.

[…]

One of the particular threats of AI impersonations of election officials is that they’re used to mislead other election workers. For example, a faked secretary of state could push out wrong last-minute changes during the organized chaos of Election Day, confusing local election administrators or poll workers and disrupting voting. Or AI can be used to mimic a colleague to try gaining unauthorized access to important systems.

“We’re seeing a little smarter phishing emails because AI does make it a bit more advanced,” said Carly Koppes, the clerk and recorder of Weld County, Colorado. “They may be trying to test some waters and ramp it up for later this year.”

For a lot of reasons, there’s plenty to be worried about. At least we’re more aware of what the potential attacks might look like, and we all know there are plenty of bad actors and willing dupes out there. I would just like to know what our Secretary of State is doing, and how that office is working with the hundreds of county election officials. The real fear I have is that whatever Jane Nelson and her staff may prepare for and be ready to do, they’ll get as much trouble from various Republicans as they do from the attackers. I sure hope I’m wrong about that.

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PFLAG wins injunction against Paxton’s intrusive data requests

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox, as I have not seen any news stories about this yet:

The Travis County District Court today granted a temporary injunction blocking the Texas Attorney General’s Office’s latest effort targeting transgender Texans — its demand that PFLAG National turn over information and documents about the organization’s support of families in Texas seeking gender-affirming medical care for their transgender youth.

“PFLAG families in Texas gained further protection today when the court reaffirmed that the Attorney General can’t two-step around the law with an outrageous demand for private information,” said Brian K. Bond (he/him), CEO of PFLAG National. “PFLAG National will continue to fight to protect our families, because trans youth and their loved ones deserve better, and loving your LGBTQ+ kid is always the right thing to do.”

The organizations Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Transgender Law Center, and Arnold & Porter, who earlier secured a temporary restraining order on PFLAG National’s behalf, this past Monday asked the court to issue an injunction blocking the Attorney General’s investigative demands while the legal advocates pursue their challenge in court. The court agreed and issued the order upon completion of the hearing.

“PFLAG National has consistently protected Texas families with transgender youth in the face of the State’s persecution,” said Chloe Kempf (she/her), attorney with the ACLU of Texas. “This court ruling is a critical step in allowing PFLAG National and its members to join together and advocate for each other, free from the threat of the attorney general’s retaliation and intimidation. But we know that this isn’t over, and Texans of all races, genders, and backgrounds must be able to continue to engage in civil society to advocate for their safety, equality, and constitutional rights.”

“We’re so thankful the court saw through this transparent abuse of power by the Office of the Attorney General,” said Elizabeth Gill (she/her), staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “The directives sent to PFLAG are baseless intimidation tactics, clearly aimed at silencing protected speech and preventing the organization from advocating on behalf of families with transgender youth. We remain committed to ensuring the right of PFLAG and its Texas membership remain protected.”

“While the current TRO protected PFLAG National and its Texas member families, the threat from the Attorney General’s outrageous demands continued to loom,” said Karen Loewy (she/her), senior counsel and director of constitutional law practice at Lambda Legal. “The court appreciated the burden that the threat of the Attorney General’s demands imposed on PFLAG National and its Texas members and quite properly concluded they warranted protection as we pursue our challenge in court. We applaud the court’s decision. Texas families need to know they can continue to support their transgender children without fear of retaliation.”

“Transgender Law Center celebrates alongside our partners and PFLAG families who can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that their privacy and constitutional rights remain protected in the state of Texas,” said Lynly Egyes (she/her), legal director at Transgender Law Center. “PFLAG, and the loving families who are the heart of that great organization, know that all young people deserve the freedom to grow and thrive.”

On February 9, PFLAG National received civil demands from the Attorney General’s Office to turn over documents, communications, and information related to PFLAG National and the organization’s work helping families in Texas with transgender adolescents. PFLAG National is a plaintiff in two lawsuits filed against restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for adolescents in Texas: one lawsuit Loe v. Texas, challenging S.B. 14, the state’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors, and PFLAG v. Abbott, challenging the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ rule mandating investigations of parents who work with medical professionals to provide their adolescent transgender children with medically necessary healthcare. Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Transgender Law Center, and the law firm Arnold & Porter represent PFLAG, Inc. in this newly filed case.

See here for the background on this case, here, here, and here for more on the lawsuit over the ban on gender affirming care, here and here for more on Paxton’s harassment of out of state clinics and hospitals, and here for more on the litigation to stop DFPS investigations into the families of trans kids. More from PFLAG on this case is here. A court date of June 10 was set for the trial on the merits of the case. As with anything involving Ken Paxton, it ain’t over till all the appeals have been exhausted, so it’s possible that this injunction could be put on hold, most likely if it happens by the Supreme Court. As this is a state case, we at least have the blessing of no Fifth Circuit involvement. But stuff can still happen. I’ll look for news coverage of this and will update as needed.

UPDATE: KXAN is the first that I see to have a story about this.

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Some AstroWorld defendants try to get out

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Lots going on here.

Apple, Drake and other defendants targeted have asked a Harris County court to dismiss them from a sprawling lawsuit filed by victims of the 2021 Astroworld disaster.

A flood of new motions and documents filed in Harris County’s 11th Civil District since the end of 2023 show efforts by attorneys to define just who is responsible for the failures at the Travis Scott concert that killed 10 people and injured scores more.

At the same time, filings from the plaintiffs’ lawyers reveal expert testimony, expected to play a part in any upcoming trial, that employees from two concert’s organizers — NRG Park operator ASM Global and Live Nation — knew the expected crowd size would exceed safe levels days before the concert and failed to heed lessons learns from previous Travis Scott concerts in 2018 and 2019.

“It is an industry accepted principle that elements of crowd behavior can be predicted and that a crowd can be managed if handled properly,” wrote Larry Perkins, of Perkins Crowd Management Group, a consultant on crowd safety. “However, in the case of the Nov. 5, 2021, event, the festival was not properly planned and staffed resulting in the inability to manage the ingress and crowd flow.”

The planner failed to meet industry standard, he wrote.

[…]

In a March 8 filing, attorney for Drake, whose real name is Aubrey Drake Graham, said despite a meticulous complaint filed by the plaintiffs lawyers, developed over the course of two years, they did “not attribute any direct conduct, activity, omissions or obligations” to Drake that caused the disaster. The rapper performed for about 14 minutes, and only got on the stage after many of the injuries had already occurred, his attorney wrote. He was not involved in the planning of the festival, his attorney said, and was an invitee “much like the festival patrons.”

In its filings, Apple also said it didn’t have anything in to do with planning the concert.

“Apple’s involvement was limited to Travis Scott’s performance — one performance out of dozens during the planned two-day event,” Apple wrote, saying the plaintiffs lawyers didn’t have a “scintilla of evidence” to claim the concert was a joint venture between the tech company and Scott.

In a different motion, Apple also pushed back at a claim made by ASM that the tech giant was to blame to disaster because one of its livestream cameras “may have created obstructions that would have further reduced the usable square footage for accommodating the audience.”

Apple was contracted to livestream the concert on Nov. 2, 2021, just three days before the show, lawyers wrote.

See here for previous coverage. I don’t have any opinion on these motions, which seem like normal lawyering to me, but I am interested in the expert testimony that this tragedy was foreseeable. There’s more on that in the story, and in this Houston Landing piece.

Ten days before the 2021 Astroworld music festival, the event’s safety director was worried about whether organizers could cram throngs of fans in front of main act Travis Scott.

“I feel like there is no way we are going to fit 50k in front of that stage,” Seyth Boardman wrote to the festival’s operations director. “Especially with all of the trees!”

Boardman’s fears became deadly reality on the night of Nov. 5, 2021, when 10 young fans packed into a section near the stage suffered fatal injuries from a crowd crush during Scott’s musical set.

Boardman’s message was one of several high-level conversations about crowding at the festival in the days and hours leading up to the festival’s deadly climax, according to a review of hundreds of pages of court records filed in recent weeks.

Those documents, submitted in connection with the mass of civil litigation from victims, contain the most detailed information yet about the lead-up to the festival, which has never been the subject of an independent investigation. Harris County commissioners rejected Judge Lina Hidalgo’s request for one after the tragedy.

In the absence of an outside review, contract experts for the plaintiffs have authored their own attempts to make sense of the disaster. They contend festival planners relied on a fundamental misunderstanding of how many people they legally could pack into its grounds – and they did not have enough space even by their own, generous estimates.

That error, the experts allege, was compounded by security lapses on the day of Astroworld that allowed gatecrashers to swarm the festival grounds, and a failure to monitor the crowd for the tell-tale signs of crowd crush.

There’s more, so read the rest. This all sounds bad, but it’s evidence being put forth by the plaintiffs. The defense still gets to have a say, both in terms of questioning this evidence and presenting their own. There will be a lot more to come in this case.

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