Over the summer, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor sided with Open Carry Tarrant County's Kory Watkins and struck down as unconstitutional an Arlington city ordinance banning people from distributing literature -- in his case copies of the Constitution -- to passing motorists. According to a brief p ... More >>
Late Tuesday afternoon, the Supreme Court cleared the way for reopening 13 abortion-providing health clinics that shuttered following an October 2 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed Texas to begin enforcing the most draconian portions of House Bill 2, the state's 2013 anti- ... More >>
Monday morning word came down from on high, or wherever it is the Supreme Court proclamations come from, that the court would not hear any of several same-sex marriage cases it could have this term. In turning down cases from the 4th, 7th and 10th federal circuit courts, the Supreme Court paved the ... More >>
Total Wine, the chain of delightfully enormous alcoholic beverage emporia, might never have made it to Texas were it not for a strip club. Twenty-four years ago two guys, one from Florida, one from Tennessee, decided to buy a San Antonio Baby Dolls. They had the cash. They had the expertise. Their ... More >>
Your friendly neighborhood strip club, it's safe to say, is no fan of the $5-per-patron "pole tax" the Texas legislature saw fit to levy in 2007. Its displeasure has been expressed in two ways: by refusing to pay (the tax has so far raised less than a third of the projected $44 million, prompting Co ... More >>
There have been two significant developments since the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state doesn't have to say where it got the pentobarbital it will use to kill death row inmates Tommy Lynn Sells and Ramiro Hernandez-Llanas. One is that the state of Texas, which had been rather vague ... More >>
Pretend that a corporation from China wants to build a factory in Texas just for the fun of it and needs to seize a bunch of Texans' private property to build the factory, because it's going to be really big and awesome. Do you think the Texas Supreme Court would stand for that? Probably not. And ... More >>
On Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court will thrust itself into a debate as old as the Internet: Is the web a place where ideas and opinions, often vile, sometimes damaging, should be allowed to flow unencumbered? Or should there be some means of identifying defamatory speech and purging it from the In ... More >>
When the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and more than a dozen health care providers took Attorney General Greg Abbott to court in September to challenge Texas' new anti-abortion law, they weren't trying to tackle the entire law. Instead, they narrowed in on a few key provisions that were supposed to take ... More >>
There's something fundamentally troubling about seeing a judge on the campaign trail. Take Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, for no other reason than that he has waded into the debate. He knows the system and has successfully held onto his place on the state's highest bench. Voters, assuming ... More >>
Yesterday when he told the Urban league he was going after Texas on voting rights, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder quoted a federal court decision last year in which the court said Hispanic plaintiffs in Texas had "provided more evidence of discriminatory intent than we have space, or need, to ad ... More >>
Barring a stay of execution, Douglas Feldman is scheduled to die in nine days. His petition for a state writ of habeas corpus based on ineffective assistance of counsel has gone nowhere. He claims his trial attorney failed to investigate the role his alleged bipolar disorder played in the murders. N ... More >>
As you may recall, Texas' 2011 plan to redraw political boundaries was so brazenly partisan, so undeniably bent on reducing minority influence, and the evidence was so mountainous and convincing that a federal court didn't even bother cataloging it all in its ruling against the state. "The parties h ... More >>
A controversial Farmers Branch immigration ordinance will get a second chance in court after a sound rejection back in March, and the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's controversial immigration bill will play a determining role. Farmers Branch has three times passed a "housing" ordinance whi ... More >>
Opposing counsel in a six-year legal battle over a proposed Farmers Branch immigration ordinance are trading letters to the judge, arguing, naturally, that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's immigration law supports their side. Last month, the high court struck down every provision of Ari ... More >>
New laws in dozens of states could take out Barack Obama this fall.
Sure, it goes against everything we learned in elementary school -- cut in line and suffer ridicule and a knuckle to the shoulder -- but it turns out the city of Dallas has every right to allow compressed natural gas-powered taxis to queue-jump at Love Field to improve air quality, U.S. District Jud ... More >>
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a federal district court's order forcing the American Cancer Society to return some $240,000 donated by Irving-based Giant Operating, an oil and gas company the Security and Exchange Commission says defrauded investors of more than $13 million. The ... More >>
It's been close to five months since Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins went after Mortgage Electronic Registration System over what Watkins claimed were "tens of millions in uncollected filing fees owed to the citizens of Dallas County." But since then little has been said about the s ... More >>
Yesterday we gave you the heads-up: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has brought in former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement to try to throw out what they claim are the federal court's "unlawful redistricting maps." And, right on cue, they've filed their emergency stays with the U.S. Supreme ... More >>
On Wednesday we got our first look at the new-look Texas maps drawn by the court, which is attempting to rectify the U.S. Department of Justice's concerns that the state Legislature is attempting to keep Hispanics from voting for Hispanic candidates, especially in Dallas-Fort Worth. To which Texa ... More >>
Photo by Chris HowellThis afternoon, U.S. District Judge David Godbey helped City Hall and Occupy Dallas come to a verbal agreement that protestors can not only keep camping outside City Hall, but can also use City Hall restrooms and keep their current signage -- two issues disputed in the te ... More >>
This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a very confusing ruling in the case involving Dallas County's voting machines -- a case, you'll recall, that stemmed from Linda Harper-Brown's 19-vote victory over Democrat Bob Romano in 1998. Long story short: The Texas Democratic Party (represent ... More >>
Behind the counter at the Pleasant Grove convenience store following the September 2001 shooting of Rais Bhuiyan by Mark StromanTomorrow, the steady stream of stories about Rais Bhuiyan's attempt to save Mark Stroman -- the man who shot Bhuiyan in the face and killed two other men in the days fo ... More >>
Photo by Brian HarkinHarlan CrowI'm killing time at this point ... and this bottle of Old Fitzgerald. And while we wait for the county to update its election totals, I'm reading tomorrow's New York Times, which is full of local-interest stories -- more than our own daily, probably. Like this nice ... More >>
Harvard prof Einer Elhauge A couple of years back we noted that the price-fix was back in, thanks in large part to a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that eventually put a Flower Mound business out of business. Perhaps you recall that case: Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. Kay's Kloset -- ... More >>
At this late date is there really any reason to go back and retell the tale of the Ghost of War on Christmas Past? You remember this, right? Kids at Plano Independent School District elementary schools pass out "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" pencils and Christian-flavored candy canes amongs ... More >>
Rickey SmileyBack in May, we directed your attention to the legal woes of Henry Robinson, a former Love Field security guard who claimed in Dallas federal court that The Beat-97.9 host Rickey Smiley cost him his job when he went questioned his heterosexuality. The whole thing stemmed from an inci ... More >>
Remember when David and Shannon Croft sued the state because they didn't want their kids, then enrolled in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district, to recite the Texas Pledge of Allegiance? Yup. Totally forgot about that one. That was two long years ago -- back when the Crofts also sued the ... More >>
Ruben Bohuchot Allen Gwinn just texted me with today's news: Ruben Bohuchot, the former Dallas Independent School District associate superintendent for technology indicted last year and convicted in July for screwing the district out of millions, was just sentenced in federal court. Writes Allen, U. ... More >>
Josephine Davis used to work in the Dallas office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of General Counsel -- used to. Now, she may very well end up in prison for the next decade. Lesson learned? Do not use a government-issued credit card to spend $10,000 on a retirement party f ... More >>
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall is a popular venue for patent infringement lawsuits; as The New York Times pointed out in 2006, right after that famous Echostar-TiVo trial wrapped, "more patent lawsuits will be filed here this year than in federal district court ... More >>
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas and Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund just sent a press release celebrating U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay's decision today to grant a preliminary injunction that blocks the implementation of that anti-illegal immigrant ordina ... More >>
Illustration by Craig LaRotonda Last Tuesday, three days after voters in Farmers Branch voted overwhemingly for the law that bans apartment owners from renting to illegal immigrants, we posted that press release from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American Civil Li ... More >>
I tore apart Dallas' Only Daily this morning looking for the story about how, on Monday, attorneys representing Holy Land Foundation asked a federal judge here to dismiss charges the U.S. government filed against it after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Didn't see anything; nothing on the We ... More >>
The U.S. Supreme Court decision on Texas redistricting is out, and by almost any measure it's a Republican victory. A 5-4 decision isn't exactly crushing, but the effects certainly are: DeLay's 2003 map, known as Plan 1374C, is left almost intact, as is his new tactic of redistricting whenever powe ... More >>
Andre Lewis was eight hours from being executed, until the courts realized they had made a big mistake
Federal judge strikes down Dallas' two-rubs-and-you're-out rule for strip clubs
Dallas-based Supreme Beef wins a major round in its court battle with the USDA
Fearless reformer or legal terrorist? Bobby Wightman-Cervantes makes a run for the Senate. The Texas Bar says he should have his head examined.
Order in the cork
Federal Judge John H. McBryde gets more than a slap on the wrist from his outraged brethren
John Henry McBryde's day of reckoning is at hand, but what that means is anybody's guess
Judge John Henry McBryde ruled his court like a minor despot, angering lawyers and fellow judges. Now they're lined up to depose him, and the Constitution be damned.
The search for a new federal judge reaches the lowest common denominator
Sexual harassment charges against Sky Chefs are settled quietly, and reluctantly