The 45-member governing body of the State Bar of Texas has scheduled an emergency meeting for July 27 to discuss Facebook posts by the organization’s president stating that Black Lives Matter is “a terrorist group.”
Two members of the bar association’s board of directors have called publicly for Larry McDougal, who was sworn in as the Texas Bar president less than four weeks ago, to resign. Hundreds of other lawyers in the state have taken to Facebook to ask or demand that McDougal resign.
Bar association insiders, however, say that they do not think the group’s board has the authority to remove McDougal – only to censure him. And McDougal, in his meeting with the AALS and with specific board members, has said that he has no plans to resign.
“I don’t think the board has any power to do anything, and I think it is unlikely the votes are there to even ask him to resign,” one board member told The Texas Lawbook. “But it should be a wildly entertaining shit show.”
The state bar’s African American Law Section, which met privately with McDougal last weekend, has publicly called on the bar president to take a series of dramatic steps showing that he is truly sorry for his comments and that he is not a racist or he needs to resign.
Six past and future state bar presidents issued a statement last weekend condemning McDougal’s Facebook post, but they stopped short of seeking his removal.
“This is a hot-button issue that the bar and the board need to address,” said Houston trial lawyer Randy Sorrels, who is the past president of the State Bar of Texas. “We need to hear Larry out. We need to hear what he has to say before we make any decisions. Some of the programs Larry is pushing are very good for the bar and our members.”
Sorrels is also one of the bar leaders who denounced McDougal’s comments in the Texas Bar’s only public statement on the matter.
McDougal, a Fort Bend County criminal defense attorney, published a three-minute video last Saturday on YouTube apologizing for his comments and stating that he no longer believes that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization.
The fact that the entire controversy has played out over Facebook has made the issue even more turbulent.
Over several years, McDougal posted several comments critical of Black Lives Matter, but the focus has been on a Sept. 7, 2015, statement he wrote on Facebook discussing election laws and public access to polling places that included the following comment:
“The news media has waged war on law enforcement officers in the aftermath of several highly publicized killings. Groups like Black Lives Matter has publicly called for the death of not just police officers but also White Americans. This is a terrorist group.”
McDougal has not responded to a request for an interview by The Texas Lawbook.
“I think President McDougal’s comments were racist, and I think he should resign,” Fort Worth trial lawyer and current state bar board member Jason Smith told The Lawbook in an interview. “Sadly, President McDougal’s comments reinforced the idea that the state bar is a good ol’ boy network, which cannot be further from the truth.
“The feedback that I have received has been overwhelmingly in favor of President McDougal’s resignation,” Smith said.
Another board member, Houston family lawyer Diane St. Yves, has also publicly called for McDougal’s resignation. However, she did not respond to a request for a comment.
To be sure, McDougal has his defenders.
“I’m taking lots of heat for defending Larry, but if I thought Larry was a racist, I wouldn’t be his friend,” said Steve Fischer, an El Paso lawyer and member of the state bar’s board of directors. “His apology impressed no one. But I believe Larry will get through this and he can be the best state bar president in history.”
“I think Larry was completely wrong about Black Lives Matter, but he should not resign and I don’t think the board can make him resign.”
Fischer, in an interview Thursday, said that the board will be divided into three camps: those who want McDougal to resign, those who support McDougal but think he needs to make a better apology and a large group in the middle.
All eyes have been focused on the reaction of the Texas Bar’s African American Law Section, whose leadership met with McDougal last Saturday for two hours via Zoom.
AALS Chair Rudy Metayer, in an interview Monday with The Texas Lawbook, said McDougal’s Facebook posts “were inaccurate and misinformed at best, were hateful and harmful at worst, but were unequivocally divisive.” The group stated that McDougal’s “inability to sincerely understand the impact of his statements … cannot and should not be overlooked or tolerated in the leader of the State Bar.”
Metayer said McDougal promised that he could use this situation to be a “change agent” for more diversity and inclusion in the legal profession. AALS leaders issued a series of demands for McDougal, including a formal written apology, a public acknowledgement of the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement and an explanation of his change “in viewpoint about why the Black Lives Matter is an important movement – and for not just African Americans, but for all Americans.”
If McDougal declined to take these steps, AALS leaders said they would “call on his immediate resignation.”
More than two thousand Texas lawyers posted comments on the “Texas Lawyers” page Facebook and on other social media outlets over the weekend.
“He needs to resign,” Houston tax and probate lawyer Reginald McKamie wrote on Sorrel’s Facebook page. “You cannot separate the message from the office he holds. He has lost the trust of many members of the bar because he cannot possibly have the best interests of Black Lawyers in any of his actions.”
Brian Cuban, a prominent member of the Texas Bar Association and brother of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, also denounced McDougal.
“I deeply regret casting my vote for [McDougal],” Cuban posted on his Facebook page. “I urge him to tender his resignation.”
The NEW Roundtable, a nonprofit organization of African American women corporate general counsel and senior in-house and outside counsel, wrote on its Facebook page that McDougal’s “apology was insufficient” and supported the AALS’s position.
“We hope that Mr. McDougal will rise to the call of the hour and address the African American Lawyers Section’s call to action,” the group stated. “Should he refuse to do so, we insist that he resign.”
But scores and scores of Texas lawyers came to McDougal’s defense.
Kimberly Stuart Noska, a Houston lawyer, wrote on Sorrel’s Facebook page that “not one penny of the state bar money should go to an organization that supports defunding our police or overthrowing the basic tenants of the laws we swore to uphold.”
“We all need to stop pandering to this organization,” she wrote. “There are numerous other ways we can show inclusion to the minority members of [the] bar rather than join the bandwagon.”
Houston lawyer Sean Timmons, for example, wrote on the same Facebook thread that “BLM is a Marxist organization.”
“The cause is good but the organization itself is anti-police,” Timmons wrote. “This Salem witch trials mob is totally unbecoming. We all have First Amendment rights, whether it’s repulsive or unpopular speech. We are heading toward a French Revolution or a Soviet style society if we keep throwing everyone over the cliff for unpopular opinions.”
“Bullshit,” responded Dallas lawyer Curtis Clinesmith. “There are consequences for opinions.”
“Sure, but we all have the right to express them,” Timmons shot back. “Since when did we move to a totalitarian dictatorship? Keeping people quiet under duress changes nothing. Such is Marxism.”