In August 2018, Texas A&M University-Commerce gave George Hale a choice: 1) Sign a loyalty oath swearing he would never join or support a boycott of Israel, 2) Lose his contract to continue working on an award-winning podcast about unsolved crimes in Texas for the public radio station associated with…
Airbnb is officially on Texas’ list. Not for being a menace to apartment dwellers everywhere or avoiding hotel occupancy taxes, or anything like that. Instead, Airbnb, a home-sharing app that offers an alternative to traditional hotels, is in trouble with the state because it refuses to list Israeli-owned rentals in…
The only thing propping up the veneer of transparency created by the Texas Open Meetings Act is the honor system, thanks to a ruling earlier this week from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’ highest criminal court. Until Wednesday morning, Texas law forbid public officials from knowingly discussing public…
What started as a legal battle between Gearbox Software (Borderlands, Aliens: Colonial Marines) CEO Randy Pitchford and his company’s former legal counsel, Wade Callender, has boiled over into the public sphere thanks to a number of shocking details in a recent lawsuit.
A now-closed Dallas nightclub and former Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Josh Brent bear joint responsibility for the death of Brent’s best friend and former teammate Jerry Brown in a 2012 car accident, a Dallas County jury decided. During a nearly weeklong trial, attorneys for Brown’s family asked the jury to…
The Spunky Squaw, a Stephenville-based online boutique that was ensnared in a controversy in October for their use of what many believe was a racist slur in their business name, recently had their website taken down, causing a collective sigh of relief from American Indian activists who were campaigning against the…
A national civil rights nonprofit sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and four Texas Department of Public Safety officials Wednesday in an effort to kill a controversial Texas program that the group says has caused the suspension of 1.4 million Texans’ driver’s licenses. Texas’ Driver Responsibility Program imposes surcharges on those…
The Dallas County Commissioners Court on Tuesday approved a $120,000 payment to settle a lawsuit brought against the former head of Dallas County Health and Human Services. The vote came 11 months after the county fired longtime health department chief Zach Thompson following sexual harassment allegations by a subordinate employee…
It turns out the nearly decade-long fight over Texas’ legislative districts didn’t actually end with the Supreme Court’s ruling against the plaintiffs in June. Late Friday afternoon, the coalition of voting rights groups that have fought the state for fairer legislative districts since the last round of redistricting in 2010…
Monday, a Dallas County grand jury heard evidence in the case against Amber Guyger, the former Dallas Police Department officer who shot and killed Botham Jean. What the grand jury heard or who they heard it from isn’t known — grand jury proceedings are secret — but attorneys for Jean’s…
The Republican majority that Texas’ 5th Court of Appeals held for almost 20 years came to end after last week’s elections in what is probably the real local upset of the midterms. Overnight, the court of 13 Republican judges became majority Democrat with eight winning seats, including a new Democratic…
The Motel 6 hotel chain has agreed to a $7.6 million settlement with a group of individuals who sued the company earlier this year for disclosing their personal information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while they stayed at the hotel. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund sued…
District Attorney Faith Johnson’s silence on her decision to try six teens charged for armed robbery as adults is drawing criticism from organizers working to end mass incarceration. The six teens, all between the ages of 13 and 16, allegedly stole a black Chevy Malibu at gunpoint in the early…
Mary Jane preferred animals to people “10 out of 10 times,” she says. She grew up in southern Louisiana, a place of winding swampland roads where family ties run deep. She studied wildlife management with a focus in aquaculture at Louisiana State University. Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agents…
In the Muslim community, an imam is someone followers trust, a leader in the community to whom Muslims turn for consolation and counseling. But at one of the largest mosques in North Texas, Imam Zia Ul-Haq Sheikh is accused of breaching that trust when he began an illicit relationship with…
Texas’ system of electing judges has long drawn criticism about the potential influence of campaign donations in the outcome of cases. Plaintiffs’ lawyer John McCraw took those critiques one step further last month when he filed a motion asking two justices on Texas’ 5th Court of Appeals to remove themselves from…
Political donations are behind an appellate court ruling that overturned a jury’s verdict requiring an apartment company to pay $1 million to two women raped by a man who entered their Garland home through a window with a broken latch, the women’s attorney claims in a motion filed this week…
After eight hours of deliberation, a Dallas County jury said Thursday afternoon they could not reach a verdict in the case against former Mesquite Police Department Officer Derick Wiley, charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for shooting an unarmed man who was trying to quiet the alarm on his…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, apparently, has an iron deficiency. Tuesday, the former state representative and current securities-fraud indictee decided to take a bite of the reddest of conservative red meat — the Pledge of Allegiance. Paxton is intervening in a lawsuit between a Houston-area high school student, India Landry,…
Last year, Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson promised that anyone caught with less than 4 ounces of marijuana would no longer be arrested on the spot, spend a night in jail and a pay an expensive bond to get out. But so far, not much has changed. In 2017,…
Over the last two decades, the Dallas Mavericks organization has suffered from a culture of sexual harassment, misconduct and intimidation, according to the results of an independent investigation into team culture released Wednesday. Team owner Mark Cuban will donate $10 million to women’s groups because of what the NBA calls…
While investigators are still collecting facts for the manslaughter case filed against Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger and the outcome is unknowable, one thing is almost certain: Someone will be called upon to pay for the death of Botham Jean, if not in criminal court, then in a civil case…
