Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The Texas Supreme Court has held a challenge to an "election integrity" law as too broad in its sweep to limit how Texas voting officials "solicit" mail-in ballots.
The plaintiffs, according to court records, seek more than $100 million in damages for wrongful death, physical impairment, disfigurement, mental anguish and loss of use and enjoyment of real property. Houston's 14th Court of Appeals dismissed some claims against Union Pacific but sent the case back to Harris County District Court to determine the fate of the others.
Next up in the lineup challenging the 2011 sale of the Houston Astros: the Texas Supreme Court. After the court granted review of former Astros owner Drayton McLane’s petition contesting lower court holdings that the new owner might have paid too much, a principal issue on deck is whether the sale can be reversed.
First the Texas Medical Board temporarily slapped an Austin neurologist with a sanction for unprofessional patient contact. But only when a judge cleared him of the allegations did his fight really begin to rid a national database of the sanction that even the medical board dismissed. But the Texas Supreme Court ruled enough was enough.
In First Amendment decisions like the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent injunction stopping enforcement of a Texas law governing social media platforms, and other free-speech challenges for years, Vinson & Elkins senior partner Tom Leatherbury has been front and center. Leatherbury, widely regarded as a leading media and appellate lawyer in the state and who founded a media law clinic at SMU, tells The Texas Lawbook that First Amendment challenges never seem to end.
A SCOTX dispatch, including a case highlight and other causes to watch.
For the third time in five years, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has rebuked a federal district court judge in Houston for denying a plaintiff discovery before summary judgment. “This is the third time we have been asked to consider whether a particular district court can deny discovery rights protected by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure because, in the district court’s view, that discovery is unnecessary,” the three-judge panel declared in a per curiam opinion. “We have twice held no. Today we so hold a third time.”
In an amicus brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, several former Texas judges urge the court to grant certiorari in the case of a Grayson County Black man convicted by an all-white jury that included several jurors who said they disapproved of his interracial marriage.
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