The case of Jeffrey and Henry Buck, the gay Dallas couple who married in Massachusetts in 2006 before filing for divorce in Dallas two years later, proved a couple things. One was that gay married couples, just like straight married couples, can fall out of love and decide it’s best…
Last April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued enforcement guidance No. 915.002, more commonly referred to as the “Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Few people paid attention. One of those who did was Texas Attorney General…
The aftermath of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling last week reinstating the requirement that doctors performing abortions in Texas have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic was swift and sweeping. By the next morning, a third of the state’s abortion clinics had closed…
Most of Texas’ sweeping anti-abortion law has already gone into effect. The ban on the procedure after 20 weeks post-fertilization, the requirement that clinics meet the standards laid out for ambulatory surgical center, the mandatory reliance on outdated FDA guidelines on abortion-inducing drugs–all scooted from Governor Perry’s desk to reality…
Since the Texas Legislature made online solicitation of a minor a crime in 2005, it’s been used to lock up any number of gymnastics coaches, teachers, as well as plenty of non-educators caught digitally cruising for sex with underage kids. Today, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled unanimously that…
On October 3, a few weeks after celebrating their 16th anniversary as a couple, Vic Holmes and Mark Phariss of Plano walked into the Bexar County Clerk’s Office to apply for a marriage license. Their request was was denied, as they knew it would be. Same-sex marriage is still banned…
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel never intended to wade into the abortion wars. He made that much clear in the preamble to his ruling, handed down today, in Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit over Texas’ new abortion restrictions: Today there is no issue that divides the people of this country more than…
A piece of classic Rockwall architecture is in danger. The Cinemark movie theater, whose majestic faux-Mediterranean facade and tasteful neon signage are the apotheosis of the modern strip-center design movement, will no longer greet eastbound drivers on Interstate 30 unless a team of developers and their allies at Rockwall City…
The stakes in the two-day trial over Planned Parenthood’s challenge to Texas’ new abortion restrictions, which kicked off yesterday in Austin, are rather low. Whatever decision U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel hands down will be appealed to the 5th Circuit, then the Supreme Court, leaving the law in constitutional limbo…
More plaintiffs are lining up to take a crack at Chesapeake Energy, this time joined by the city of Fort Worth. It’s the second major North Texas city to file suit against the first player to make a big splash extracting natural gas from the Barnett Shale. Arlington brought its…
In the wake of last month’s hunt for a serial rapist targeting South Dallas, the smart money said that the first lawsuit would come from Alan Mason, the mild-mannered insurance salesman whose name and picture were plastered across the media after he was mistakenly identified by police as a “person…
After five years of litigation and a three-week trial, it took a jury all of a couple of hours to decide that, contrary to the Securities and Exchange Commission, there was no evidence that Mark Cuban was guilty of insider trading. Outside the courthouse, a newly vindicated Cuban briefed a…
True.com has always been a study in contradictions, an upstart dating website promising “a wholesome environment for courtship” while rather shamelessly inundating the Internet with ads featuring photos of scantily clad women and, in one alleged case, a dead soldier. For a time, the paradox worked. The New York Times…
Gubernatorial hopeful and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott probably won’t get a chance this time around to roll back every meaningful regulation that curbs carbon-dioxide emissions — the gas driving climate change — but he will take a shot at a significant one. The high court announced Tuesday that it…
Carlos Sanders was at home in Burleson with his young son on January 31 when there was a knock on the door. He opened it to find two cops standing there, holding a warrant. Exactly what happened next depends on whom you ask. Sanders says in a federal lawsuit filed…
The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from Dallas-based Luminant seeking to topple Clean Air Act limits on emissions increases resulting from planned startups and shutdowns of its power plants. The state’s largest generator of electricity sought an exemption for these operations from fines levied by the EPA…
In one very limited sense, the Dallas PD response to a pair of armed robberies in South Dallas on the night of February 2, 2012, was a success. After a brief chase, they arrested 29-year-old Donnell Charles Collins after finding him wedged between a toilet and a wall in an…
A decade ago, Konrad “Konny” Reimann, tired of his native Hamburg, Germany, packed up his family and set off for Gainesville, Texas. There, he established Konny Island (Google translates it back from the German as “Konny Iceland”) and embarked upon a thoroughly American life, complete with an ever-present cowboy hat…
BREAKING: PP, @ACLU, & @ReproRights have filed a suit in federal court to stop #HB2 from taking effect in TX. #StandWithTXWomen— Cecile Richards (@CecileRichards) September 27, 2013 Long before Wendy Davis laced up her pink Mizunos and stepped onto the floor of the Texas Senate for her historic filibuster, the…
It started with a call to the Alzheimer’s Association in Dallas. On May 29, David Seyfried phoned the agency’s hotline to tell them that his wife, Delores, a 67-year-old Alzeheimer’s patient, was “agitated” and waving around a letter opener. He was expecting advice. What he got a few minutes later…
Craig James’ tenure as a college football analyst on Fox Sports Southwest was hilariously brief. It took all of one day for the station’s corporate parent to learn of the hire, review James’ comments on homosexuality from his failed U.S. Senate campaign, and show him the door. College football fans…
In mid-July, CBS 11 carried a brief report about a near-drowning at a University of North Texas swimming pool. A teenager attending an overnight football camp had been pulled from the bottom of the pool by lifeguards around 9 p.m. on July 11 and rushed to the hospital. The boy…
