Austin, TX
Cancer case highlights gaps in Texas protections for women firefighters
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas (KXAN) — Between carpool, homework, and after-school activities for her two teenage daughters, Suzanne La Follette fits in chemo.
As she and her partner move through daily life, they’ve had to navigate cancer treatments and a legal system surrounding workers’ compensation.
“To have this on top of it has been really overwhelming,” La Follette said.
The Austin Fire Department lieutenant of nearly two decades said she was diagnosed with terminal uterine cancer last May. She explained in November 2025, the City of Austin denied her workers’ compensation claim, classifying her cancer as a “disease of life” rather than an illness tied to her work as a firefighter.
“I have no regrets (about) becoming a firefighter,” La Follette said. “But I do think this job absolutely caused the cancer.”
Her case highlights concerns by firefighter associations across the state and the need to strengthen Texas’ presumptive cancer laws, particularly to ensure women firefighters are covered.
Focus on cancers impacting women
La Follette, 46, appealed the city’s decision.
In April, a ruling affirmed that her cancer is occupational, making her eligible for workers’ compensation benefits. A city spokesperson said it’s not appealing the judge’s decision.
“All workers’ compensation claims are unique and evaluated on a case-by-case basis. This process ensured that Lt. La Follette’s case was reviewed and considered by a neutral third party,” said the statement to KXAN investigators. “We are thankful for the clarity provided by the Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation and appreciate Lt. La Follette’s years of service to this community.”
Under Texas law, certain cancers are presumed to be job-related for firefighters, but cancers specifically impacting women, including uterine cancer, are not listed.
It’s why state lawmakers want to study the issue and have directed the Department of State Health Services and the Texas Commission on Fire Protection to compare cancer rates of women firefighters across the state to other women, focusing on ovarian, cervical, uterine and breast cancers. A report due to the Texas legislature by September must include the results of the study and any recommendations.
DSHS said the agency is using Texas Cancer Registry data to compare all cancers, and those specific to women, among women who are firefighters and those who are not. The Texas Commission on Fire Protection explained the agency has shared data with the state health department on more than 40,000 firefighters in Texas to correlate the data, which does not include occupations. The data will allow DSHS to identify women employed as firefighters.
“There have been many studies which show a link to increased risk of cancer amongst male firefighters for a broad range of cancers; however, until now, there were not enough female firefighters in the state to do a meaningful study into the increased risk these women face to female-specific cancers, such as ovarian and breast cancers,” said State Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, one of the authors of the legislation which became law last legislative session.
Patterson said the new law does not change existing code or policy, but the state will study whether certain cancers should be added to preemptive measures, as other specific cancers have been.
‘Left by the wayside’
Firefighter associations are advocating for statewide changes to cancer protections for firefighters.
“They could get it through the exposure to carcinogens on the fire ground, benzene, diesel exhaust in the fire station, if they don’t have that taken care of,” explained John Riddle, president of the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters.
The association has almost 21,000 members and points to gaps in research, which has historically focused on men.
“They’ve (women) been kind of left by the wayside quite frankly over the years,” said Riddle. “And we need to fix that.”
Though the number of studies into cancer rates impacting female firefighters are limited, one out of Florida is similar to what Texas is hoping to learn.
A study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 2020 examined cancer risk in over 100,000 Florida firefighters over three decades.
The study found women firefighters had a 154% increased risk of brain cancer, a 142% increased risk of thyroid cancer and a 68% greater risk of melanoma compared to women who were not firefighters. The authors of the study explained more research is needed to focus on a larger number of women firefighters diagnosed with cancer.
It’s what another national study currently underway hopes to do.
The Fire Fighter Cancer Cohort Study, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is focusing on women firefighters and evaluating factors associated with the increased risk for cancer, reproductive health outcomes and stress in the fire service. As of early May, more than 1,400 women firefighters have enrolled in the study from across the country, over 170 from Texas.
“I’ve really been optimistic that we can make some change,” La Follette said, hearing about the ongoing studies. “The more research we gather, the more we realize… that cancer is an occupational hazard of firefighting.”
FILE – LinkedIn logos are displayed on an iPhone and computer screen. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Attorney General’s office has opened an investigation into LinkedIn over allegations that the professional networking platform misleads consumers with advertising and profiting from misleading or fake job listings, otherwise known as “ghost jobs.”
LinkedIn investigation
In this photo illustration a Linkedin logo seen displayed on a mobile phone. (Photo Illustration by Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
What we know:
Texas announced on Tuesday it has issued a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) seeking documents, data and internal communications related to LinkedIn’s advertising, marketing, job listing verification practices and its Premium subscription services.
The investigation centers on whether LinkedIn violated Texas’ consumer protection laws by promoting paid subscription services while allegedly failing to disclose that some job listings on the platform may not actually be representative of hiring opportunities.
What is a ‘ghost job’?
An image of a woman holding a cell phone in front of a LinkedIn logo displayed on a computer screen. On Tuesday, January 12, 2021, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Dig deeper:
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and the world’s largest professional networking platform, with more than 1 billion registered users worldwide.
A “ghost job” generally refers to a position advertised online that either is no longer available or that an employer has no immediate intention of filling. The attorney general’s office cited independent studies estimating that ghost jobs account for between one-fifth and one-third of online job postings.
Texas AG targets Premium Subscription Fees
Photographer: Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images
What they’re saying:
According to the office of the attorney general, LinkedIn does not independently verify the hiring status of most job listings on its platform. Ken Paxton’s office alleges that the company’s marketing for its Premium subscription services does not disclose that a significant number of postings could be inactive, unfilled or not reflect genuine employment opportunity.
“I will use every resource available to my office to help job-seeking Texans find and secure real employment opportunities,” Paxton said in a statement. “LinkedIn has a duty to provide the services it advertises and ensure that consumers paying for Premium subscriptions are receiving access to legitimate job postings.”
Texas officials said LinkedIn’s Premium Career and Premium Business subscriptions cost about $39.99 and $69.99 per month, respectively, and are marketed to jobseekers looking to improve their employment prospects.
What’s next:
The investigation does not include any formal allegations of wrongdoing, and no lawsuit has been filed.
The Source: Information in this article was provided by the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
Director Kristin Tièche says the seed for her new documentary, The Invisible Mammal, was planted back in 1999, when she was a film student in upstate New York.
“I was sitting at this pub on campus, and I looked up and the sky was just filled with bats,” said Tieche, a native Californian who had never seen a bat before.
“I just thought it was the coolest thing ever,” she said.
These days, such a sight is all but impossible to behold in New York and many other states. A deadly disease called white-nose syndrome is to blame.
The Invisible Mammal follows a team of researchers as they set out to protect bats from the disease, which has emptied entire caves and roosting spots once teaming with life. It’s being screened Tuesday night at AFS Cinema and will be followed by a Q&A.
White-nose syndrome is caused by an invasive fungus found in Europe, likely brought to America on the clothes of a visitor who came to see American bats up close. It kills by starving hibernating bats.
The disease causes bats to “wake up too often during winter and they burn up their fat reserves and die before spring,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International.
First detected in New York state in 2006, the disease steadily spread across the continent, inflicting catastrophic damage on bat colonies in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Midwest. In some parts of the U.S. and Canada, white-nose has wiped out over 90% of bat populations. While the disease exists in Texas, it has not proved as destructive so far.
When it appeared in California in 2019, Tièche thought back to that night decades before when she saw her first bat flight.
“I knew at that moment that it was time to launch this film project,” she said.
The result is a nonnarrated documentary that follows researchers and conservationists across the country, as they protect bats and study ways to battle white-nose syndrome.
Its primary focus is Frick and the team of scientists behind the Fat Bat Project, an initiative started in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that aims to keep bats well fed around their winter hibernation.
“The idea was could we help bats get fat in the fall and also help them recover their body condition in the spring?” Frick said. “Because we had research that showed that the bats that were surviving tended to be fatter at the start of hibernation.”
Tièche said it was not until she arrived in Michigan to shoot that she realized the team of scientists working on the Fat Bat Project was comprised entirely of women.
“I knew at that point that I also was going to tell the story of women in science,” she said.
White-nose exists in Texas, but the colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats so celebrated in the Hill Country are at lower risk of death. That’s largely because they do not hibernate in the same way some other species do, and insect meals are available in Central Texas deeper into the winter months.
Still, Austin’s Congress Avenue bat bridge makes an appearance in the documentary. The film also opens and closes with immersive scenes — filmed by Austin wildlife cinematographer Skip Hobbie — of bats flying out of the Bracken Cave Preserve, home to the world’s largest bat colony.
Courtesy of Kristin Tièchei
“I told him [Hobbie] I was hoping for people to fall in love with bats when they watch,” Tièche said. “You protect what you love.”
White-nose syndrome continues to decimate bats as it spreads, but there’s reason for cautious optimism. Some species that were nearly wiped out in the Northeastern states are beginning to show modest recovery, Frick said, though it is not fully clear why.
She said the Fat Bat Project, which has expanded across the Northeast and into Texas, is also showing promise as one tool of many that could stave off total population collapse in some areas.
The Invisible Mammal is screening at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 14, at AFS Cinema. It will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Kristin Tièche, producer Matthew Podolsky, cinematographer Skip Hobbie and Winifred Frick of Bat Conservation International.
Brandywine Realty Trust sold 405 Colorado Street in Downtown Austin for $151 million.
Jerry Sweeney, Brandywine’s CEO, discussed how the company was looking to offload somewhere between $250 million and $300 million of its portfolio earlier this year, according to the Austin Business Journal. Earlier this year, the building was billed as 100 percent leased. Houston-based Hines announced that its real estate assets investment arm, Hines Global Income Trust, purchased the building in a statement published Monday. The sale price was disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The Class-AA office property was completed in 2021, and features 206,000 square feet of office space across 25 stories. Hines paid around $733 per square foot for the building. Tenants at the building include JP Morgan Chase, Bain & Company and AllianceBernstein. Hines Global reports that as of May 2026, it controlled $6.4 billion in gross asset value. The statement from Hines is explicit in their reasoning for acquiring the property: Alfonso Mark, Hines’ global co-head of investment management said in the statement that the company believes that fully leased trophy office buildings are driving recovery in the United States’ office market.
Philadelphia-based Brandywine will still maintain a notable presence in Austin. The Uptown ATX development close to Austin’s second downtown, The Domain, is still receiving a $31 million facelift that’s expected to complete by the end of 2027. Last year, Brandywine stole headlines by snagging Nvidia as a tenant. The six-story, 172,000-square-foot building is getting a shiny new lobby to go with other new amenities. Last year, Brandywine sold Quarry Lake II and Four Barton Skyway, according to the outlet. Quarry Lake II’s 120,600 square feet of office space went to Brick Row Holdings, and Four Barton Skyway went to an unknown buyer.
In the same announcement, Hines confirmed that it had also purchased Wicker Park Commons in Chicago.
— Hunter Cooke
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