Good.
The former Alamo Trust CEO, who oversaw much of its historic $700 million makeover in recent years before being pressured out, can continue with the major allegations in her lawsuit against Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and State Land Commissioner Don Buckingham.
San Antonio Federal Judge Xavier Rodriguez made the ruling on Tuesday. And among those allegations are that both state officials violated her First Amendment rights as they pressured her to resign from the trust.
“We are very pleased by the Court’s Order, which keeps all of the Defendants in the case and allows nearly all of Kate’s claims to proceed. We look forward to discovery and trial,” said her attorney Lawrence Morales II in a statement to Texas Public Radio.
During a dispute over how the Alamo’s history should be interpreted last year, Rogers was forced out of her position after state leaders objected to views she expressed in her doctoral dissertation, saying they conflicted with the state’s preferred narrative of the Alamo.
The disagreements were triggered by posts from the Alamo’s social media accounts acknowledging Indigenous Peoples’ Day in October 2025.
The Alamo itself is owned by the Texas General Land Office, which is overseen by Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, who had decried the posting saying, “Woke has no place at the Alamo.”
Later that month, Rogers was forced to resign from her position, which she had held since 2021.
She said on TPR’s The Source in January that Lt. Governor Dan Patrick publicly expressed displeasure with a dissertation she had written in 2023 that argued that the Alamo’s story should include Indigenous peoples and other communities often minimized in traditional retellings.
The suit alleges that Patrick and Buckingham had transformed the Alamo “from the ‘Cradle of Liberty’ to a Graveyard of Censorship in Just Eleven Days.”
“The fighters at the Alamo courageously held off Santa Anna’s troops for thirteen days. But Lieutenant Governor Patrick and Commissioner Buckingham only needed eleven days to lay siege to the First Amendment,” the original complaint filed in November 2025 said.
Court documents show that Rogers was suing to be reinstated and was also seeking monetary damages and a declaratory judgement that the acts committed by the state were a violation of the First Amendment.
See here for the background. I don’t want to get too excited by this, because the Fifth Circuit is out there, lurking like a gang enforcer. But that’s a worry for another day. Today let’s be happy that maybe Dan Patrick will have to defend himself in a courtroom. Who wouldn’t want to see that? The Current has more.