Every year, May 1 commemorates the struggles and gains of workers around the world. This year, International Workers’ Day will have added significance in San Antonio, where the city’s voters will decide that day the fate of the police union’s collective bargaining...
Texas Municipal Law Blog
Rio Grande Valley city challenges state statute
Sometimes legal disputes involving Texas cities and counties jump around the map. The Hidalgo County city of McAllen has filed a lawsuit in Travis County over a state law passed in Austin to resolve a problem in Progreso (another Hidalgo County city). Pharr – also in...
Pandemic stalls Texas courts and fills some county jails
The pandemic has upended much of everyday life, including in the Texas criminal justice system. In order to slow the spread of Covid-19 and to avoid having judges and jurors exposed to Covid-19, most counties haven’t held any criminal jury trials since March of last...
Rio Grande Valley city sued over boxing match broadcast
The city of Donna, Texas, is in Rio Grande Valley – the very southernmost tip of Texas – just a few miles east of McAllen. The city is being sued over a 2017 campaign event hosted by a then mayoral candidate at a property owned by the city of about 15,000 residents....
El Paso wrestles with serious matter: Frivolous ethics complaints
Texas city and county governments take ethics complaints against employees seriously. El Paso is no exception. However, in an increasingly litigious world, El Paso is also like other Texas municipalities in that it sometimes must contend with frivolous ethics...
Churches thankful for court win over Texas town
The small Texas town of Magnolia sits about 45 miles northwest of Houston. Though it bills itself as a “community of unity,” three Magnolia churches are raising their voices in protest of what they claim is discrimination against them by the town of about 2,200...
Texas city settles excessive force lawsuit
Rio Grande City and a woman who was shot with a stun gun there by police in 2014 recently reached a settlement to resolve her lawsuit. However, details of the agreement were initially withheld from an area newspaper that filed a request for records under the Texas...
Report: Law enforcement regulation is ‘broken’ in Texas
One of the many challenges that have emerged in 2020 for governmental agencies across the nation has been finding ways to restore public confidence in policing – a challenge our state is currently not meeting, according to a Texas Sunset Advisory Commission report....
Texas attorney general accused of firing aides in retaliation
State law includes a stout statute to protect government employees who believe their employer – a governmental body or official – has broken the law. In these situations, a government employee might want to report the misdeeds to authorities, but fears that the cost...
Texas county’s pandemic restrictions halted – at least temporarily
A few days ago, Texas became the second state to hit a grim pandemic milestone when it passed 1 million cases of Covid-19. California was the first state to pass the million mark. The numbers are growing faster than ever, as the virus surges in both states and in many...
