If an Austin court hearing this week is an early indication of how a lawsuit blocking Texas’ $3 billion dementia research fund will fare, state leaders who championed it and the voters who overwhelmingly approved it by more than a 2-1 margin may have little worry.
On Tuesday, it took 21 minutes of back-and-forth between state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble and one of plaintiffs — a self-proclaimed Texas voter representing herself without an attorney — for the judge to politely but firmly point out she had missed a critical step to move forward with any lawsuit: properly notify the people she is suing.
“You’re not going to have a temporary injunction hearing today,” the judge told Shannon Huggins that she and fellow plaintiffs Lars Kuslich and Jose Silvester had missed properly serving Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock with their Nov. 13 lawsuit.
The trio’s case is still in play — and the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute, one of 17 constitutional amendments voters passed on Nov. 4, is still blocked from going into effect — but this first shaky court appearance offered a look at what Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick considered a pressing problem: “frivolous” challenges to constitutional amendments.
Challenges to constitutional amendments have become such a growing concern and problem that this year the Texas Legislature passed a comprehensive judicial bill that included a provision to prevent lawsuits from halting constitutional amendments like DPRIT’s Proposition 14, which 2 million Texas voters approved.
However, that law, House Bill 16, didn’t go into effect until Thursday, much too late to have blocked last month’s lawsuit from halting DPRIT.
[…]
In the most recent lawsuit challenging DPRIT, it’s not clear whether the plaintiffs’ flub as shown during Tuesday’s hearing will result in the same outcome as the 2023 cases. Abbott’s office offered no comment on the matter, saying only that the governor had advised Texans to vote for all the constitutional amendments. The Texas Attorney General’s office has not returned requests for comment on the DPRIT lawsuit or the next legal steps to be taken.
The fear for DPRIT supporters is that it could meet the same fate as a 2021 constitutional amendment. Filed by Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, that amendment — which would have allowed counties to issue more bonds — hasn’t gone into effect because the lawsuit against it is still caught up in court.
“So the court can kill the constitutional amendment and override two thirds of each [legislative] body and the will of the people,” Nichols said. “That’s insane to me.”
[…]
Nichol’s 2021 measure would have provided counties the ability to create special taxing authorities to allow the issuance of bonds to improve roads; 63% of voters approved the measure.
In that case, plaintiffs challenged the amendment language as being vague and won a ruling in their favor. However, it remains in limbo because the state has not answered whether it will appeal, according to plaintiffs’ lawyer Tony McDonald and Nichols.
“They killed it by district court,” Nichols said. “They should not be able to sit on it forever.”
See here for some background on this lawsuit, with links from there about the 2023 lawsuits and how similar clownishness led to them being mooted. I was not aware of the 2021 case, but I have to ask how it is that the state hasn’t decided to appeal that verdict. Isn’t that the job of the Attorney General? Has anyone asked Ken Paxton about this? I find that more stunning than anything about this lawsuit. Anyway, my guess is that one way or another this little piece of ridiculousness will wither away, it’s just a matter of how long it can hold on before its inevitable demise.