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February 16th, 2023:

Where we are on the agenda

Feb 16th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
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Greg Abbott targets transgender college sports ban.

Gov. Greg Abbott wants to ban transgender college students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity, adding momentum to a Republican proposal that’s condemned by LGBTQ advocates and progressive groups.

“This next session, we will pass a law prohibiting biological men to compete against women in college sports,” Abbott said in a Saturday interview at the Young America’s Foundation “Freedom Conference” in Dallas.

The Republican governor said he believes “women, and only women, should be competing [against each other] in college or high school sports.”

Transgender K-12 student athletes are already prohibited from competing on teams that don’t associate with their sex at birth, under a measure passed by Republican lawmakers in 2021. The author of that bill, state Rep. Valoree Swanson of Spring, is proposing extending the restriction this session to the college level.

State Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, has introduced a similar measure in the upper chamber.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has already said he supports the college ban in the Texas Senate, which he oversees. On Monday, he listed it among his 30 top priorities for the session.

I’ll get back to this in a minute, but just as a reminder, there are very few transgender women who compete in NCAA athletics and fewer of them have actually won anything, this would force transgender men who are taking testosterone and thus would have a real competitive advantage over assigned-female-at-birth athletes (go google Mack Beggs to see what I mean), and it would put Texas in conflict with the NCAA. But first, the Dan Patrick agenda.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced a list Monday of 30 wide-ranging bills that he has designated his legislative priorities, including providing property tax relief and increasing natural gas plants to improve the reliability of the state’s power grid. He also detailed more specifically his plans to push a socially conservative agenda that would ban certain books in schools, restrict transgender student athlete participation in collegiate sports and end gender-transition treatment for young people.

In a statement announcing his priority bills, Patrick said he believed Texans largely supported his proposals because they “largely reflect the policies supported by the conservative majority of Texans.”

You can read on, but basically this session will be a nightmare for the LGBTQ community.

“I think most Texans want to live in a free and fair state, where the government is not attacking us, our families or our kids,” said Brian Klosterboer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “The Texas Senate in recent years has been obsessed with bullying LGBTQ youth, especially those who are transgender. In the last couple of years, transgender youth in Texas have been under constant attack from the government.”

Texas lawmakers proposed dozens of LGBTQ restrictions in the 2021 legislative session, and this year’s tally has already reached 72, according to a bill tracker put together by the advocacy group Equality Texas.

Klosterboer said the proposals are not only harmful but unconstitutional — and the ACLU and other civil rights groups would stop them from taking effect if they advanced.

[…]

Johnathan Gooch, spokesman for Equality Texas, said lawmakers should pay attention to how even just debating these bills can have a grave impact on LGBTQ youths’ mental health.

A 2022 Trevor Project study found that 47 percent of LGBTQ youth considered suicide that year and 16 percent had attempted it.

“If our lawmakers were truly interested in protecting youth, then they need to find ways to protect LGBTQ young people because the campaigns they’ve been running against them have been really harmful and really painful for everyone,” he said.

They’re not interested, and I don’t have much faith that the courts will stop them. I wish I felt differently. I keep saying it, nothing is going to change until we change who we elect to state office.

Speaking of the NCAA:

The Texas NAACP is calling on professional sports and the National Collegiate Athletic Association to boycott Texas over Gov. Greg Abbott’s attempt to end diversity hiring programs on college campuses and in state government.

“The governor’s initiative will do enormous harm and take the state backwards,” NAACP president Gary Bledsoe said Tuesday.

Bledsoe and Black leaders in the Texas Legislature said they are sending letters to the NCAA, as well as the NBA, NFL and MLB, to request their help. More specifically, Bledsoe called for not awarding any additional all-star games, Super Bowls or other championship events in Texas.

The NCAA in particular has several major events planned in Texas, including the men’s basketball Final Four in Houston in April and the women’s basketball Final Four in Dallas. In 2024, Houston is scheduled to host the College Football Playoff championship and San Antonio is the host city for the 2025 NCAA men’s basketball Final Four. The MLB All-Star Game in 2024 is scheduled for Globe Life Field in Arlington.

The financial hit from losing those events could be massive — a 2017 report, for instance, showed that when San Antonio hosted the NCAA Final Four in 2018, it was set to generate $234 million in total economic impact because of the tens of thousands of visitors.

See here for the background. There was a brief moment, mostly in 2017, when the NCAA and some sports leagues attempted to stand up for LGBTQ rights and voting rights by moving certain events out of certain states. That moment didn’t last, and I’m not optimistic about it coming back. When the national attention is focused elsewhere, it’s really hard to get it to turn your direction. But at least this is a pressure point that can be acted on right now. It’s worth the effort, but it’s going to take some big numbers.

Fairfield Lake State Park is officially closing

Feb 16th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

At the end of the month.

A popular state park southeast of Dallas is poised to become an exclusive community with multimillion-dollar homes and a private golf course.

Fairfield Lake State Park will close Feb. 28 after months of negotiations between private companies and the state failed to secure a deal.

The landowner of Fairfield Lake State Park is selling the property to a Dallas developer, who plans to build the high-end gated community. On Monday, Texas Parks and Wildlife received a notice to vacate the 50-year-old lease within 120 days.

Although the park has been open to the public since 1976, the property is owned by Vistra Energy, which has leased the land to the state at no cost.

Vistra is selling to Todd Interests, the developer responsible for high-end projects in downtown Dallas, including The National and East Quarter. The developer, Shawn Todd, has indicated he will no longer lease the land to the state.

[…]

The park’s closure comes at a critical time: Texas is growing fast, with the population soon expected to hit 30 million. Park visitation skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic and shows no signs of slowing, park officials have said.

In 2021, Texas state parks had a record 9.94 million visitors. Last year, Fairfield welcomed 82,000 visitors, more than during any year in its history

On average, parks are seeing a 2% to 5% jump in visitors each year. This year, the number is expected to top 10 million for the first time.

Texas, however, lags behind other states in public parkland, according to a report by the nonprofit Environment Texas Research and Policy Center. The state ranks 35th in the nation for state park acreage per capita. Texas has 8 million more people than Florida, but 86,000 fewer acres of state parkland, the report says.

“Texas really doesn’t have enough state park land,” said Janice Bezanson, senior policy director for the Texas Conservation Alliance. “It’s particularly sad to see a popular park shut down at a time when we should be celebrating our state parks.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the state’s parks system, with numerous celebrations planned across the state. Later this year, Palo Pinto Mountains State Park is scheduled to open about 75 miles west of Fort Worth. It will be the region’s first new state park in 25 years.

Elected leaders on Tuesday bemoaned the park’s closure and urged the companies to continue to work with the state for a solution.

“Texas cannot lose a state park to development,” state Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican and chairman of the state’s water, agriculture and rural affairs committee, said in a written statement. “Some 80,000 hardworking Texans will lose a place of solitude, sport fishing and priceless memory making if the park is closed.”

See here for the background. It’s a shame, but it’s not unexpected at this point. The real question is what if anything the Lege will do about it. I don’t see them taking action about this deal, though as we well know by now the current Lege has no problems with barging into situations it had previously left alone. As the story notes, more than a dozen other state parks are on leased land, meaning that someday this could be their fate as well. The Lege would be well within their normal parameters to do something there, and with a ginormous surplus the funds are there to just buy up all that land, which the TPWD didn’t have the money to do for Fairfield. So what’s it gonna be, Sen. Perry? You’ve done the talk. Got any action in there? The Chron has more.

UPDATE: A potential course of action, from the Trib:

State Rep. Angelia Orr, R-Itasca, whose district includes the park, filed a bill Tuesday that, if passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor, would allow Texas Parks and Wildlife to use eminent domain to seize the park’s land.

Orr said lawmakers also are working on a bill to prevent more state parks from being closed.

“This treasured piece of Texas has blessed our local families and countless visitors for generations, and losing it is hard to comprehend,” she said. “I join park lovers in Freestone County and across the state in expressing my sincere disappointment in hearing this news. As a result, we are now working on legislation to prevent this from ever occurring in any of our other beautiful state parks going forward.”

That us a clear path forward. Less clear that Republicans will take it, given how upset some of them are about eminent domain in other contexts, but ideological consistency is not the point here. I would classify this bill as an underdog, if only because most bills are, but if enough Republicans are upset about this, it will have a chance.

State Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, Chairman of the Business and Commerce, Finance and State Affairs Committee voiced his displeasure on Tuesday.

“Today’s heartbreaking announcement of the closing of Fairfield Lake State Park is a tremendous loss for Freestone County and all Texans who enjoy our state’s unique parklands,” he said. “It is unfortunate that Vistra and this private developer were unable to come to an agreement that would have allowed the state of Texas to purchase the park from Vistra to maintain it for future generations of Texans.”

There’s a bill that’s just been filed that may be of interest to you, Senator. Go talk to your colleague in the House about it.

Judge in True the Vote lawsuit recuses himself

Feb 16th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
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This is a surprise.

A Reagan-appointed federal judge on Monday recused himself from a case involving a Houston-based conservative group that promotes election conspiracy theories after the group’s lawyers accused him of failing to be impartial.

Election management software company Konnech filed the suit in September, alleging that the nonprofit group, True the Vote, defamed the company by making false or reckless statements in social media posts and podcast interviews, damaged the company’s business relationships and accessed data from its computers without authorization.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt in October held the leaders of True the Vote in contempt of court and ordered them to jail until they complied with a temporary restraining order. The two spent nearly a week in jail before a federal appellate court overturned the order and let them go.

Hoyt was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and took the bench the following year.

Michael Wynne, a Houston lawyer who represents True the Vote, directed Hearst Newspapers to a statement by the group on Twitter.

“True the Vote respects Judge Hoyt’s recusal,” the group wrote. “We credit Judge Hoyt for critically examining his ability to be objective in a politically-charged case like this and then acting in accordance with the law. That is a hard thing for a jurist to do.”

Lawyers for True the Vote argued in a motion to recuse that Hoyt had been unduly influenced by the plaintiff’s “disparaging” and “irrelevant” statements, including citing a Texas Monthly characterization of the group’s leaders as “the Bonnie and Clyde of election denial.”

They wrote that Hoyt exhibited a bias against the group that could affect, or at least appear to affect, his decisions.

They also noted that a three-judge panel of the strongly conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Hoyt’s contempt order and made the unusual statement that Hoyt’s rulings against True the Vote were made “to litigate the case on Konnech’s behalf,” implying the judge favored the plaintiff.

“It is an unavoidable fact that in this case, a case far more politically charged than we see in the great majority of recusal motions found in the case law, a reasonable observer would expect a higher-than-usual standard of judicial evenhandedness and temperance,” True the Vote’s motion read. “Such expectations were challenged once this court inherited plaintiff’s misrepresentations.”

Hoyt did not offer an explanation for granting the motion to recuse. The regional presiding judge will now have to transfer the case to another court or assign another judge to the case.

[…]

True the Vote also claimed Hoyt made comments that displayed his bias. At an Oct. 6 hearing when a lawyer for True the Vote expressed he feared Hoyt thought he was “trying to play a game,” Hoyt responded: “Not you. I’m thinking you may be played.”

“I think I’m a better judge of character than that,” said the group’s former counsel Brock Akers.

“You would have thought that of the president or a lot of lawyers who have been disbarred or who are being now sanctioned,” Hoyt said. “I have no reason to believe those weren’t good lawyers, but they were played.”

Later, Akers said: “I’m confident that I have not been played and that the work that they have done is worthy.”

“The work that who has done?” Hoyt asked.

“The work that my client True the Vote (did) in order to accomplish election integrity overall …” Akers started to say.

“I don’t really have any confidence in any of these folk who claim they are doing that,” Hoyt said. “We did pretty good until about three or four years ago, five or six years ago. The only people that I know of who have done something wrong are people who have been either caught or who have been charged and mistreated. Do errors get made? Yeah. Do people cheat? Perhaps. But all of this fuss and hustle and bustle about the integrity of a process and the way you fix that process is you tear it apart? That’s not integrity. That’s destruction.”

The archives are here. I dunno, man. I obviously have strong opinions about True the Vote, but their actions speak for themselves. This last exchange here sounds more to me like the judge saying that True the Vote’s words and actions don’t match up. Is it bias if your own actions have earned you a certain level of disrespect? Again, I dunno. The main thing I do know is that this is going to set the timetable for this lawsuit back by months. I can’t imagine the plaintiffs are too happy about that.

Texas blog roundup for the week of February 13

Feb 16th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
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The Texas Progressive Alliance extends their sympathy to everyone who made ill-advised prop bets during the Super Bowl as it brings you this week’s roundup.

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