Texas
Ken Paxton is suing five Texas cities over their marijuana decriminalization ordinances
Back in 2022, voters in five municipalities in Texas – Austin, Elgin, Killeen, Denton and San Marcos – approved ballot measures that would decriminalize low-level marijuana possession. The initiative was led by Ground Game Texas, a progressive organization whose polity priorities include protections for “workers, wages and weed.”
In all five cities, the ordinances had overwhelming support: 85% of Austin voters were in favor, while Killeen, with the lowest share of votes in favor, still passed the measure with 69% voting “yay.”
Now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing to block the ordinances, saying they run afoul of state law. In a press release last week, Paxton said the cities “violate the lawful statutes designed to protect the public from crime, drugs, and violence.”
At least one nonprofit, Decriminalize Denton, has said it will be filing a petition to have Paxton’s lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that it has no legal standing. But according to marijuana law expert Frank Snyder of the Texas A&M University School of Law, Paxton may indeed have a case.
Snyder spoke with the Texas Standard about the ordinances, Paxton’s challenge, and what we can expect to see as the legal fight plays out.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Five Texas cities passed these ordinances in 2022: Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin, Denton. Remind us what these ordinances do.
Frank Snyder: Essentially, they prohibit police officers in those cities – and other enforcement officials – from going after low-level marijuana offenses such as possession. Essentially, the ordinance says that the cities are de-prioritizing marijuana enforcement.
And what does de-prioritizing mean?
It means, essentially, that while it’s still illegal, and the police still can do it, they should put that at the very bottom of the list and should not, in fact, be arresting people simply for possession of relatively small amounts of marijuana.
Well, as you’re probably aware, the attorney general says he will “not stand idly by as cities run by pro-crime extremists deliberately violate Texas law.” What sort of argument is he making here, that there is something in particular in these cities that is illegal under Texas law?
Yeah, I mean, shorn of the rhetoric, what he’s basically saying is Texas makes marijuana illegal under its Controlled Substances Act and under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Cities like the ones you mentioned have home rule, which allows them to pass ordinances that have the effect of law so long as under the Texas Constitution, they don’t conflict with the laws passed by the Legislature.
These laws theoretically don’t violate that particular provision. But Texas also has a statute that says no municipality may refuse to enforce the drug laws. That was passed back in 1997, actually. And thus these ordinances directly conflict with state law. And the attorney general is arguing that they therefore can’t stand.
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
Well, does Paxton’s lawsuit then hold any legal weight, or is this all about politics? How do you see it?
There may well be politics involved in it, but it looks to me like the suits are very well-grounded. You know, there’s been another suit out, the Bell County-Killeen suit, about whether the county could enforce these things. But ordinarily, the state has the authority to override municipalities’ laws. And therefore, in my view, the suit’s on solid legal grounds.
At least one organization, Decriminalize Denton, is seeking to have this lawsuit dismissed. Where do you see this headed?
Well, they’re making an interesting – I haven’t seen their paperwork, but I’ve heard about it – they’re making an argument that, in fact, it’s not really having any effect, and therefore the suit is moot; there’s no reason to bring the lawsuit.
My view in the courts is that Paxton is likely to prevail. Now, what that entails – I mean, how you go about ordering the city officials to enforce laws that they don’t want to enforce – that’s where things get tricky. Charging someone with not enforcing the law, when in fact, district attorneys have discretion about how to go about their duties, that raises really interesting questions.
These cities, in some respects, don’t seem to be outliers, to the extent that you can go just about anywhere in Texas – go to a truckstop or a convenience store – and you’ll see gummies and and vapes and other products for sale. Many of these products claim to contain THC-9.
It doesn’t seem like there’s a big push in the first place, even in some of the cities that have not passed these ordinances. And I’m just curious about how that lack of enforcement or apparent lack of enforcement might come into play here in these arguments.
I think that’s a really great point. One of the things that’s complicating things is how complicated the marijuana regulations are now. Plants with THC levels above 0.3 are illegal. But if you take hemp and you process it enough, you will get some THC out of it, which is theoretically legal under the federal farm bill.
And so nobody really has figured out exactly where the line is on these products. And they’re flooding the market, which makes it very difficult for police to spend time, you know, wandering through convenience stores, looking for products like this.
And so the advantage of a low-level enforcement prohibition is that it stops police from taking lots of time trying to figure those things out. So that’s what the voters presumably had in mind when they passed these ordinances.
The NHL took the first step toward expansion in Texas earlier this week, agreeing to terms with billionaire Dan Friedkin and his family to explore the feasibility of putting a franchise in Houston or Austin.
Far enough from the Dallas Stars, who relocated from Minnesota in 1993, a new team would not interfere with their territorial rights. And the league has shown no fear of adding one team at a time, so No. 33 does not have to come with No. 34.
“Symmetry I don’t think should necessarily govern expansion,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday. “You expand if you think it makes sense and enhances what the league has.”
What is behind the NHL’s interest in Texas
Money is the obvious answer. Bettman said the total investment of the project would be some $3.5 billion, which would include expansion fees paid to established owners along with the cost of building a new arena.
The Houston Rockets’ arena downtown is publicly owned but controlled by team owner Tilman Fertitta’s Clutch City Sports and Entertainment group. The home of the American Hockey League’s Texas Stars, in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park, has a capacity of 8,000 that is a little over half the size of the NHL’s smallest current rink (Winnipeg).
“I would be surprised if the NHL would be OK with an expansion team that does not have a new arena,” said Brian Mills, an associate professor at the University of Texas who teaches courses on sports economics and strategy. “The revenue potential with the luxury boxes and the way that they set those up and the money that they like to extract from the local cities is way too large to pass up.”
They are also huge markets. Houston at nearly 2.4 million is the fourth-most-populated U.S. city; Austin at just over 1 million is in the top 12.
“Obviously it makes sense if you’re a sports league to have a franchise in the nation’s fifth-largest metro area and one that is growing rapidly,” said Holy Cross professor Victor Matheson, an expert in sports economics. “Houston obviously makes sense in general as a destination for any league.”
Austin is smaller but has doubled its population since the mid-1990s and has seen an infusion of people over the past five years. Only eight of the NHL’s existing markets are bigger.
“It’s becoming more and more of a tech city, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more hockey fans here than there used to be,” Mills said. “I would imagine there’s some market for the NHL here in Austin, particularly more than when it was a sleepy, small town capital of Texas 30 years ago.”
History of hockey in Houston and Austin
When hockey was picking up in popularity in the 1960s and ‘70s and the NHL went from six teams to 18, the rival World Hockey Association was founded and Houston got a franchise when the one in Dayton, Ohio, failed to get off the ground.
The Aeros’ inaugural season was in 1972-78, and they were best known for “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe playing for them along with sons Mark and Marty. They won four Avco World Trophies as WHA champions before folding.
An AHL team using the same name existed in Houston from 1994-2013. The Texas Stars have played in Austin since ’09.
“There’s some interest of hockey,” University of Houston economics professor Steven G. Craig said. “Houston is full of immigrants from around the country and around the world. And Austin is sort of similar in the sense of a pretty heterogeneous population.”
Pros and cons of a Houston or Austin NHL franchise
Growing the sport in another so-called non-traditional spot is a big benefit. Smashing successes in places like Las Vegas and Tampa, Florida, show what hockey can do across the Sun Belt when strong ownership is involved.
“Southern cities have been doing pretty well now these days in the NHL: the Lightning and the Panthers,” Mills said of the two teams in Florida. “You’ve got some pretty good hockey teams after some pretty miserable failures with some earlier expansion to the South.”
Abandoning the second try in Atlanta (the Thrashers from 2000-11) was more a failure of ownership than the market. The same could be said in Arizona, where a revolving door of owners led to arena miscues and eventually the Coyotes being sold and moved to Salt Lake City in 2024 to become the Utah Mammoth.
A 33rd team also means 20-23 more NHL players and hopefuls in the minors. The changing landscape of hockey development at the junior and college levels has the potential to churn more talent through the pipeline in North America than ever before, along with players coming from Europe.
“You do have a pretty big pool of players,” Matheson said. “I’m not particularly worried about diluting the talent there because I think there’s a lot of skill.”
What’s next and where the 34th team may be
After this six-month exploratory phase is complete, recent history suggests a season-ticket drive would be one of the subsequent steps. Ticket drives validated interest that led to the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken.
The Board of Governors would need to approve moving forward in the process. No vote has yet been held, though the executive committee supported exploring Houston and Austin.
And while the NHL is comfortable with unbalanced Eastern and Western conferences, getting to 34 teams seems inevitable if it goes to 33. Bettman said the board on Tuesday was updated on situations in Atlanta and Arizona, and it would be no surprise if one of those places got another crack at it.
ere’s everything you need to know about one of the most recognizable trophies in North American sports — The Stanley Cup.
This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletters here.
Texas lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for assurances that issues with the state’s voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election.
“Those fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don’t, we can’t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Harris County, during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing that addressed voter registration and voter list maintenance issues.
Bettencourt said he’s heard complaints about the system, known as TEAM, from election officials in Travis, Austin, and Jackson counties, among others.
Christina Adkins, the elections division director at the secretary of state’s office, said the agency is “dedicating every possible resource that we have within our office to resolving these issues.”
“There is nothing more important in our office than this project,” Adkins said.
TEAM was redesigned and redeveloped by the state and relaunched last summer. Election officials say they have struggled with it since then, and though some functionality issues have been resolved, others continue to come up.
For example, election officials have reported that processes such as voter registration status lookups and precinct assignments frequently don’t work properly. In addition, the system often malfunctions when attempting to produce reports of registered voters and voters who have requested a mail ballot, forcing some election officials to produce their own spreadsheets to keep track.
The problems, election officials say, have added financial and staffing strains on counties already strapped for resources.
The system was developed by Civix, a Louisiana-based vendor. The majority of the state’s 254 counties rely on TEAM to plan elections and maintain their voter rolls. Even counties that instead use software from a state-approved private vendor to manage their voter rolls are required by state law to sync their data with TEAM daily, and are required to use TEAM to verify a voter’s identity and their eligibility to cast a ballot.
Groups representing election officials across Texas have asked the agency to halt the TEAM update rollout and address issues that they said “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.” The groups first outlined their complaints in a letter to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson in October, and sent another one in February.
Earlier this month, Nelson announced she’d be stepping down as of July 17. Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to appoint her successor.
Secretary of state, vendor working together on fixes
According to public records, the state’s contract with Civix is for $17 million. The secretary of state’s office told Votebeat last year that the money for it came from a mix of state dollars and federal funds allocated under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, earmarked for improving election administration.
Bettencourt raised questions about Civix’s work during the hearing. “When I get half a dozen counties with their hair on fire, and some counties are small, and some of them are big, that means that the vendor is behind on actually delivering fixes to the system,” Bettencourt said.
He directly asked Adkins whether Civix was up for the task. “Yes, sir,” she responded, adding her office is working with the vendor on fixes. Civix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Civix, Adkins said, also manages voter registration systems for other states, including Louisiana and Iowa, but Texas is the vendor’s biggest election management and voter registration software customer.
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has said it anticipated technical issues with this “once-in-a-decade upgrade,” though it pointed to some unexpected challenges that have exacerbated the issues.
The agency specified that it didn’t anticipate the updated system having to handle significant amounts of data from large counties that abruptly stopped using a vendor that had financial problems. It also noted that redrawn boundaries following last year’s unexpected midcycle redistricting created additional complications that prevented counties from mailing out voter registration certificates on time.
Disclosure: Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.
-
Idaho3 minutes agoDorothy Moon reelected to third term as Idaho GOP chair
-
Georgia5 minutes agoThe Farmer’s Dog Partners with the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine to Advance Veterinary Nutrition Training
-
Hawaii8 minutes agoSewer rate hikes proposed – West Hawaii Today
-
Illinois20 minutes agoMan buys winning $1.3 million jackpot ticket at suburban gas station
-
Indiana23 minutes ago‘Foul play’ suspected in death investigation on Indiana-Ohio state line, Wayne County officials say
-
Iowa28 minutes agoNew Iowa program aims to remove barriers to family support
-
Kentucky33 minutes agoCan you set off fireworks in Kentucky? See laws ahead of Fourth of July
-
Louisiana43 minutes agoHistoric Gene Therapy Gives Young Louisiana Man a New Shot at Life
