Not long after a Dallas County district judge on Thursday denied Texas’ request to prevent the State Fair of Texas from enforcing a ban on guns, the state filed notice it was pursuing an accelerated appeal to the new Fifteenth Court of Appeals.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against Dallas, the interim city manager and the nonprofit State Fair of Texas on Aug. 29, challenging the Fair’s policy, enacted this year, of banning firearms in Fair Park. The state had requested Dallas County District Judge Emily Tobolowsky enter an injunction that would stop the policy from taking effect.
After a hearing Thursday, she denied the request.
The fair will open to the public Sept. 27, which gives Texas less than a week to try and secure on appeal the injunction it is seeking.
Jeff Tillotson of Tillotson Johnson and Patton, who represents the city of Dallas, said Friday he and his client believe “the Court reached the right result and we appreciate its careful consideration of this matter.”
In an interview with The Lawbook ahead of Thursday’s injunction hearing, Tillotson said in his view the case is not about gun rights.
“This is really a property rights issue,” he said.
The city is effectively a landlord leasing land to the State Fair for use during the 24 days the fair runs, Tillotson said, and the State Fair is a tenant.
“There’s a broader concern for the city because it leases out other property,” he said, such as the AT&T Center, The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden and domestic violence shelters. “For [Dallas], a loss here would mean no other tenants could ban guns.”
When Paxton filed suit, he did so after giving the State Fair 15 days’ notice that he intended to pursue legal action against the entity if it did not rescind the gun policy.
“Municipalities cannot nullify state law nor can they avoid accountability by contracting official functions to nominally third parties,” he said in a news release. “Neither the City of Dallas nor the State Fair of Texas can infringe on Texans’ right to self-defense.”
The State Fair has retained a team of lawyers from Holland & Knight — Jim Harris, Bryan Neal, Weston J. Mumme and Cole Browndorf — to represent it in this case.
In its response opposing the request for a temporary injunction, filed Sept. 13, the State Fair argued it shouldn’t be prohibited from “exercising its private property rights as a landholder under a lease agreement to prohibit firearms at the State Fair of Texas.”
“So as long as it is not the city of Dallas that has imposed and implemented the prohibition on firearms at Fair Park during the Fair, there has not been and there cannot have been any violation of section 411.209,” the State Fair argued, citing the government code Paxton alleges has been violated. “As will be established at the temporary injunction hearing, the city had nothing to do with SFOT’s decision to prohibit firearms at Fair Park during the Fair.”
Dallas and the interim city manager are also represented by Anne M. Johnson, Jonathan R. Patton and Mollie E. Mallory of Tillotson Johnson & Patton.
Texas is represented by Ernest C. Garcia, Canon Parker Hill, Steven Ogle and Melissa Juarez of the Texas attorney general’s office.
The case number is DC-24-14434. A case number for the accelerated appeal was not available Friday.