Texas Tribune
Paxton uses consumer protection laws for political purposes
by By Vianna Davila, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-30 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's Consumer Protection Division has aggressively targeted nonprofits, including Annunciation House, which aids immigrants. In one instance, officials demanded records without a warrant, invoking consumer protection laws. Historically, these laws investigated fraud but now are used politically, impacting charities and healthcare providers, particularly those offering gender-affirming care. Paxton's actions, often without consumer complaints, have drawn criticism for potentially violating constitutional rights. This aggressive enforcement has led to security concerns and operational changes among targeted nonprofits. Legal experts argue these actions undermine civil liberties and represent a significant departure from traditional consumer protection roles.
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The men knocked on the door of a two-story, red-brick building in downtown El Paso one chilly morning in February. When a volunteer answered, they handed her a document they said gave them the right to go inside and review records kept by Annunciation House, a nonprofit that for decades has served immigrants and refugees seeking shelter.
An employee phoned Ruben Garcia, the nonprofit's director and founder, who was at one of the organization's other properties. Feeling a calling to do more to help immigrants and other people experiencing poverty, Garcia was part of a small group that formed the nonprofit in the 1970s. He's since become an unofficial historian of the migration patterns and political response to immigration and immigrants.
But in his nearly five decades helming the nonprofit, Garcia had never encountered a situation like this. Standing on the organization's doorstep were officials sent there by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's Consumer Protection Division. They were demanding to come inside and search the nonprofit's records, including all logs identifying immigrants who received services at Annunciation House going back more than two years.
“Is this a warrant?” Garcia recalls asking the group, which included an assistant attorney general and a law enforcement officer from the state agency.
It wasn't. Still, the letter the men presented stated that the attorney general's office had the power to immediately enter the building without one.
Consumer protection laws give attorneys general broad legal authority to request a wide range of records when investigating businesses or charities for allegations of deceptive or fraudulent practices, such as gas stations that hike up fuel prices during hurricanes, companies that run robocalling phone scams and unscrupulous contractors who take advantage of homeowners.
But attorneys general have increasingly used their powers to also pursue investigations targeting organizations whose work conflicts with their political views. And Paxton, a Republican, is among the most aggressive. “He's laying out kind of like the blueprint about how to do this,” said Paul Nolette, an expert in attorneys general and director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University.
An analysis by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune shows that in the past two years, Paxton has used consumer protection law more than a dozen times to investigate a range of entities for activities like offering shelter to immigrants, providing health care to transgender teens or trying to foster a diverse workplace.
Not a single one of the investigations was prompted by a consumer complaint, Paxton's office confirmed. A complaint is not necessary to launch a probe.
The analysis is possibly an undercount. The attorney general's office said it has not consistently maintained a list of the Consumer Protection Division's demands to examine records and would need to review individual case files to determine how many requests had been sent. The agency also fought the release of certain records requested under Texas' Public Information Act, citing exceptions for anticipated litigation.
Paxton's office did not respond to requests for comment or to detailed questions. It also did not reply to a request to speak with the Consumer Protection Division's chief.
Two attorneys representing nonprofits that Paxton recently targeted said they believe he launched the investigations simply to harass their clients and to cause a chilling effect among organizations doing similar work. Both said the attorney general's demands violate the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech, association and religion, and the Fourth Amendment, which offers protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
The political weaponization of consumer protection divisions by Paxton and other attorneys general appears to be “a core violation” of constitutional laws that runs counter to what these divisions were established to do, said Georgetown Law professor Michele Goodwin.
The offices were intended to protect the public, Goodwin said. “Instead,” she added, “what is taking place in these times are efforts that undermine the civil liberties and the civil rights of people who are the public in those states and the people who are in those states who are seeking to aid and assist the public.”
In the Annunciation House case, the attorney general's office went even further by showing up at the nonprofit's door and demanding to immediately review documents rather than sending its requests for records by mail and giving organizations weeks to respond, as it often has in other cases ProPublica and the Tribune examined.
Paxton's office then denied the nonprofit's request for additional time to determine what information it was legally required to turn over, prompting Annunciation House to sue. In response, the attorney general's office argued in court documents that the nonprofit had forfeited its right to operate and publicly accused it of acting as a stash house for immigrants he alleges are in the country illegally.
The attorney general's move to shutter Annunciation House drew swift rebuke from political and religious leaders, who said his characterizations of the nonprofit were a dangerous misrepresentation of the charity. Paxton's actions also sparked concern as far away as the Vatican. In a recent interview with CBS News, Pope Francis called Paxton's efforts “madness, sheer madness.”
“The migrant has to be received,” the pope said on the television news program “60 Minutes.” “Thereafter you see how you're going to deal with them. Maybe you have to send them back. I don't know. But each case ought to be considered humanely, right?”
Annunciation House primarily serves people who are processed and released into the U.S. by immigration officials. Garcia communicates daily with Border Patrol and other federal agencies that regularly ask for help finding shelter for people who turn themselves in to authorities or are apprehended but have nowhere to go while their cases are processed.
In March, an El Paso state district judge temporarily blocked the attorney general's efforts to obtain Annunciation House's records and said the state must go through the court system to continue the investigation. “There is a real and credible concern that the attempt to prevent Annunciation House from conducting business in Texas was predetermined,” the judge wrote in his order.
Even when Paxton doesn't get speedy access to the documents he wants, he often publicizes these typically confidential cases, putting out news releases that draw headlines and build support among his base of hard-line conservatives.
The simple act of publicizing that he is pursuing an organization can cause irreparable harm, said Jerome Wesevich, an attorney who represents Annunciation House.
“Someone has to say what is the line between a legitimate investigation and harassment,” Wesevich said.
As the Annunciation House case progresses through the courts, Paxton has continued his public attacks on the nonprofit. On May 8, Paxton announced in a press release that he had filed a court injunction to stop what he called Annunciation House's “systemic criminal conduct.” He then issued a warning to other nonprofits that assist immigrants, saying that those that are “complicit in Joe Biden's illegal immigration catastrophe and think they are above the law should consider themselves on notice.”
He again called for the charity to be shut down.
Evolving power
The consumer protection cases that Paxton and like-minded attorneys general are pursuing today are virtually unrecognizable from the historically bipartisan and apolitical ones their counterparts undertook even 20 or 30 years ago, said James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general.
“The people that the laws were designed for were working-class people who were getting ripped off when they bought a used car,” said Tierney, who directs the attorney general clinic at Harvard Law School. While many attorneys general still do that work, consumer protection laws are also increasingly “being used to obviously move social agendas.”
The push to protect consumers was among numerous social movements that began to materialize in the 1960s and 1970s as Americans demanded more government action in areas like civil rights and environmental justice. As a result, states began to adopt laws that gave attorneys general the ability to investigate potential fraudulent activity by businesses.
Federal and state institutions also started encouraging attorneys general to think of themselves as representing not only the state but also the people who lived there. “This shift was significant because by serving as the representatives of individuals and groups allegedly harmed by corporate conduct, AGs essentially became a form of class-action litigator,” Nolette, the Marquette professor, wrote in his book, “Federalism on Trial.”
Initially, attorneys general focused consumer protection investigations in their own states. By the 1980s, however, the scope of the investigations began to change as the attorneys general offices started to work across state lines to target large industries.
Perhaps the most notable example is the decision by all 50 state attorneys general to sue tobacco companies in the 1990s. They successfully argued the industry misled consumers about the dangers of cigarettes and other tobacco products and intentionally marketed them to children. The lawsuits resulted in billions of dollars in settlement money. More recently, attorneys general across the country pursued similar multistate suits against the opioid industry and pharmaceutical supply chain.
The power of attorneys general continued to grow through the decades as Congress passed measures that empowered states to enforce federal law and the courts interpreted ambiguities in the law in such a way that made it easier for states to sue under federal statutes.
A number of other court decisions unrelated to consumer protection further changed the role of attorneys general. As states found it easier to bring cases that are similar to class-action suits, the Supreme Court issued rulings in the early 2010s that made it harder for private litigants to do so. The decisions essentially drove those cases to attorneys general, Tierney said.
A 2014 Supreme Court decision that lifted limits on individual campaign contributions raised the stakes of attorneys general campaigns and created “a funnel for dark money to flow into every AG race,” Tierney said.
“The machine is up and running,” Tierney said, “and will continue to run unless someone figures out how to stop it.”
Stretching the boundaries
Although Paxton has used consumer protection law to investigate a wide range of organizations with which he disagrees politically, he has perhaps most aggressively pursued those that provide or support gender-affirming care for minors.
Over the past two years, his office has launched at least six investigations into hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and an LGBTQ+ advocacy and support group, often demanding records that include sensitive patient information.
These investigations came amid a growing wave of conservative initiatives in Texas and across the country that have worked to chip away at the rights of transgender people. At least 25 states ban gender-affirming care for minors in some way, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Texas was not among those states when, in August 2021, then-state Rep. Matt Krause, a Republican who the same year launched an investigation into school library books that dealt with topics like sexuality and race, wrote to Paxton asking for an opinion on whether gender-affirming care for children amounted to child abuse. In February 2022, Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion that said it did.
Days later, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who authorized such treatment for their children, a move that spurred both condemnation — including from families, medical professionals and the White House — and fear across the state and country. These investigations are on hold following several court rulings.
As Abbott ordered the state agency to go after parents, Paxton began launching investigations into organizations that provide or support gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
One of those targeted entities was Dell Children's Medical Center in Austin. In May 2023, one of Paxton's Consumer Protection lawyers sent a letter to the hospital demanding documents related to the use of puberty blockers and counseling for transgender youth. Three weeks later, the same lawyer sent a letter seeking similar records from Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. In a news release announcing the investigation, Paxton said his office was examining whether the facility was “unlawfully” providing gender transition care.
At the time that the letters were sent to the hospitals, a law preventing transgender minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapies was working its way through the Legislature. The law ultimately passed, but it did not go into effect until Sept. 1.
Dell Children's did not respond to an interview request. Texas Children's Hospital declined to comment for this story.
In the months that followed, Paxton went even further. He began to investigate organizations outside of Texas for their connections to gender-affirming care: Seattle Children's Hospital in Washington state; QueerMed, a telehealth clinic based in Georgia; and PFLAG Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based national nonprofit that supports LGBTQ+ people and their families.
Seattle Children's Hospital sued the attorney general in December to block the release of any patient records, arguing that handing them over would violate federal and state health care privacy laws. The hospital said in legal filings it had no staff that treated transgender children in Texas or remotely.
Paxton has not answered questions about why he decided to investigate out-of-state facilities, but in court filings in the Seattle case, the attorney general's office argued it has the right to investigate the hospital and other organizations registered to do business in Texas. The demand letter sent to the hospital asked for records related to the facility's gender-affirming treatment of children who reside or used to reside in Texas. (The news organizations filed a public information request for the investigative letter Paxton sent to QueerMed, but the attorney general's office is fighting its release, citing exceptions when information is related to pending or anticipated litigation.)
What seems to unite all three cases is that the attorney general's office under Paxton “is going to use consumer protection law to stretch the boundaries of what they can do to try to make transgender care as minimal as possible in Texas,” said Colin Provost, an associate professor of public policy at University College London whose research has included how attorneys general in the U.S. work together to enforce consumer protection laws.
Paxton and Seattle Children's reached a settlement in April. As part of the deal, the hospital agreed to withdraw its Texas business license. In exchange, Paxton dropped his demand for records.
QueerMed founder Dr. Izzy Lowell declined to comment for this story. But the doctor said in an interview with The Washington Post that Paxton's push to access transgender youths' medical records was “a clear attempt to intimidate providers of gender-affirming care and parents and families that seek that care outside of Texas and other states with bans.”
PFLAG sued Paxton's office in February after the attorney general demanded its records. In court filings, Paxton alleged that the nonprofit had information about medical providers in the state that may have been committing insurance fraud. The attorney general accused health care professionals of providing gender-affirming care but disguising it as treatment for an endocrine disorder.
A Travis County district court judge issued an injunction in March that temporarily blocked the state's access to the records. In her ruling, she wrote that failing to stop the attorney general from getting these records could result in PFLAG and its members suffering harm, including limitations on their First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights. Paxton appealed her ruling. The 3rd Court of Appeals, which is hearing the case, has issued a temporary order protecting PFLAG from Paxton's demands for records.
Karen Loewy, a lawyer with Lambda Legal, which is representing PFLAG, said she remains baffled by the attorney general's decision to use the state's consumer protection law to investigate organizations like PFLAG, which provides resources to chapter support groups in the state.
“There's no consumer fraud happening here at PFLAG's hands,” Loewy said.
Yet, she said, the attorney general appears to believe that he can send these demands to anyone his office thinks has information related to an investigation. In a court filing in response to PFLAG's lawsuit, Paxton's office admitted it does not believe the nonprofit is violating the state's consumer protection law, known as the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The attorney general, however, argued in the filing that it can demand records of anyone, “not just those suspected of a violation.”
“The way in which the AG's office has argued this already shows that they think that their power is unlimited,” Loewy said.
Sending a message
Just as Paxton's campaign against transgender care for minors has sent a chill through the network of people who provide this medical care, the impacts of the attorney general's investigation of Annunciation House are reverberating throughout the community of people who work with migrants.
On Friday, Annunciation House's lawyers filed a motion to throw out the attorney general's case. Aside from arguing that Paxton's claims about the organization are unfounded, the nonprofit said in the legal filings that the probe has caused harm that is “not only imminent, it is ongoing.”
Immediately after the attorney general officials showed up at the nonprofit's offices in February, three Annunciation House volunteers quit, including the woman who answered the door. They worried the situation was “more unpredictable” than they could handle, Garcia said.
According to court records filed by Annunciation House attorneys, some volunteers have received threatening phone calls. The filings also state that the city of El Paso started stationing security guards at all of the nonprofit's shelters “around the clock” to protect the people who are staying there.
“It's scaring people from wanting to volunteer with us,” Garcia said. “It's scaring people from wanting to work with the refugees.”
Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, an El Paso-based nonprofit that works with Annunciation House and provides legal services to immigrants and refugees on both sides of the border, has not lost volunteers, but the organization's executive director, Marisa Limón Garza, said people were rattled by the fact that employees from Paxton's office showed up at a fellow nonprofit's door demanding access.
“If it's a letter in the mail, that's one thing,” Limón Garza said. “But coming and trying to access the space, that's a different level of state intervention that definitely sends a chilling effect. It sends a message.”
That message changed how Las Americas operates. It updated its security and technology systems at a cost of $25,000, money the nonprofit's leadership hadn't planned to spend, Limón Garza said. The organization also better secured its internal files, got new cellphones and laptops, and added new intercom and doorbell screening systems.
It no longer allows walk-ins.
Disclosure: The Human Rights Campaign 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.
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Gov. Abbott’s border wall will take around 30 years, $20B
by By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-03 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Governor Greg Abbott announced a state-funded border wall along Texas' Mexico border three years ago, resulting in 34 miles of steel bollards so far, at a cost of $25 million per mile. The fragmented wall faces challenges like securing land rights, with plans to cover 100 miles by 2026. Critics, including Democrats and some Republicans, argue the wall is costly and ineffective, while Abbott claims it helps combat illegal immigration. The project is part of Abbott's $11 billion border security initiative, but acquiring private land remains a significant hurdle. The wall's projected full completion could take 30 years and $20 billion.
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Three years after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas would take the extraordinary step of building a state-funded wall along the Mexico border, he has 34 miles of steel bollards to show for it.
That infrastructure — which has so far run up a price tag of some $25 million per mile — isn't yet a contiguous wall. It has gone up in bits and pieces spread across at least six counties on Texas' 1,254-mile southern border. Progress has been hampered by the state's struggles to secure land access, one of myriad challenges signaling a long and enormously expensive slog ahead for Abbott.
Nonetheless, state contractors have already propped up more wall mileage than former President Donald Trump's administration managed to build in Texas, and Abbott's wall project is plowing ahead at a quickened pace. State officials hope to erect a total of 100 miles by the end of 2026, at a rate of about half a mile per week. The governor frequently shares video of wall construction on social media and has credited the project with helping combat immigration flows. To date, though, steel barriers cover just 4% of the more than 800 miles identified by state officials as “in need of some kind of a barrier.” And at its current rate — assuming officials somehow persuade all private landowners along the way to turn their property over to the state — construction would take around 30 years and upwards of $20 billion to finish.
Under Abbott's direction, state lawmakers have approved more than $3 billion for the wall since 2021, making it one of the biggest items under the GOP governor's $11 billion border crackdown known as Operation Lone Star. The rest of the money is being used for items like flooding the border with state police and National Guard soldiers and transporting migrants to Democrat-controlled cities outside Texas, all of which Abbott and other Republicans say is needed to stem the historic number of migrants trying to enter the country.
Democrats and immigration advocates have cast the wall project as a taxpayer-funded pipe dream that will do nothing to address the root causes driving the immigration crisis. And they say the governor, in reviving what was once a hallmark of Trump's agenda, is using public money to boost his political stock.
Even some immigration-hawk Republicans are showing unease about the mounting costs of the wall.
“I am, too, concerned that we're spending a whole lot of money to give the appearance of doing something rather than taking the problem on to actually solve it, and until we do that, I don't expect to see much happen,” state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, said last fall before voting in committee to spend another $1.5 billion in wall funding.
Abbott's office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Acquiring land
The construction pace has largely hinged on the state's success securing rights to build the wall through privately owned borderland. Early on, the project showed little signs of life as state contractors struggled to obtain the needed easements. But things picked up last year as the state began working out more agreements covering larger tracts. Through mid-June, officials had secured 79 easements covering about 59 miles of the border, according to Mike Novak, executive director of the Texas Facilities Commission, which is overseeing the effort.
At a facilities commission meeting last month, Novak said state officials were in various stages of negotiation with landowners over another 113 miles.
“We knew from the beginning that this was going to be the choke point, you know, one of the most challenging parts of this program,” Novak said of land acquisition. “And it proved true. But we've remained steadfast.”
Officials had built 33.5 miles of wall through June 14, a facilities commission spokesperson said.
The state's ability to secure land rights has also dictated the wall's location, though officials say they have focused on areas pinpointed by the Department of Public Safety as the “highest priority.” TFC officials have declined to share exactly where the wall is being built, citing security concerns, though Novak recently said construction was underway on wall segments in Cameron, Maverick, Starr, Val Verde, Webb and Zapata counties.
Though the Texas-Mexico border spans more than 1,200 miles, Abbott's budget director, Sarah Hicks, told a Senate panel in 2022 that DPS had identified 805 miles “as vulnerable, or [that] is in need of some kind of a barrier.” Another 180 miles are covered by natural barriers, mostly in the Big Bend region of West Texas, while existing barriers already cover another 140 miles, according to state officials.
Novak has said the pace of building about half a mile of wall per week is expected to continue for the “foreseeable future.” At that rate, about 100 miles would go up every four years, with the full 805 miles covered sometime after 2050, when Abbott would be in his 90s.
The earliest wall construction has cost roughly $25 million to $30 million per mile, according to TFC officials. That would amount to $20 billion to $24 billion for the entire 805-mile span, or about three times the cost of paying every Texas public university student's tuition last year. The estimate does not account for the cost of maintaining the wall once it is built, which TFC estimates will cost around $500,000 per mile each year.
Lubbock state Sen. Charles Perry, who last year carried Texas' new immigration law that allows state police to arrest people for illegally crossing the Mexico border, is another Republican who has expressed concern about the wall's cost.
“I am for border security. I am not against a wall. But to me, at least from what I can tell, it is a perpetual circle. We're on the hamster wheel,” Perry said last fall as he prepared to vote for the $1.5 billion wall funding bill. “[At some point] the response has not to be more money for infrastructure. At some point this state must draw the line in the sand.”
Still, no Texas Republican has voted against border wall funding. Lawmakers approved nearly $2.5 billion for the effort in the state's current two-year budget — more than was allotted in state funds to all but a handful of state agencies, and more than twice what Texas spends on its court and juvenile justice systems.
State Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston, said she doesn't think Texas' GOP leadership “really understands why people are crossing in the first place.”
“Spending billions of dollars on a wall really does not address the root causes of the migration that's happening,” said Morales, who is vice chair of the House's Mexican American Legislative Caucus. “What we should be investing in is our education, our health care, real solutions for problems that are happening right now in Texas.”
Since 2021, federal officials have recorded an average of about 2 million illegal border crossings a year, a record that Abbott has attributed to President Joe Biden for rolling back some of Trump's border policies. The governor has touted the wall construction as a way for Texas to “address the border crisis while President Biden has sat idly by.” Biden and other Democrats have blamed Republicans for shooting down a sweeping bipartisan border deal earlier this year.
The scope of Texas' wall construction — and Abbott's broader border security efforts — are unprecedented in nature, as the federal government is generally responsible for immigration enforcement and the costs associated with it.
Even with the state's improved pace securing easements, Novak has said land access remains the biggest challenge for the project, and “it'll probably remain that way through most of the program.” The Trump administration encountered the same issue after the former president famously said he would build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. Even using the federal government's power to seize some borderland, Trump's administration built just 21 miles of new wall along the Texas-Mexico border.
The painstaking negotiations are required for Texas' wall because lawmakers barred the use of eminent domain to gain land access.
Last year, state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, filed legislation to change that, arguing TFC officials could only build a complete wall if they were authorized to use eminent domain powers. The proposal failed to make it through the Senate, though Creighton said he plans to file it again for the session that starts next January.
“Of course, we can continue to negotiate with ranchers, but that is a very slow process,” Creighton said. “And it's an incomplete process, because there will always be holdouts for different reasons.”
Creighton, one of the upper chamber's more conservative members, said he still supports using state funds to build a border wall, even as some of his GOP colleagues have raised objections.
“I say no to waste, inefficiencies, potential fraud and unreasonable spending as much as any member,” Creighton said. “But … there are times, with all of that fiscal conservatism, that we have to use the money that we save efficiently to protect Texans and Texas.”
“A difficult and complex task”
Most border wall advocates acknowledge barriers alone will not deter people from trying to enter the country illegally. But they say a wall would work if paired with more law enforcement officers and technology, arguing it would slow down attempted crossers to give border agents more time to apprehend them and encourage migrants to seek asylum via ports of entry.
But smuggling gangs have used ordinary power tools to saw through parts of Trump's wall and scaled it using disposable ladders. Some immigration experts say border walls fail to solve the underlying factors driving people to migrate, such as the poverty, violence and political upheaval in Central America, Haiti and Venezuela that is driving millions to flee and straining U.S. resources at the border.
“Walls do not achieve the objectives for which they are said to be erected; they have limited effects in stemming insurgencies and do not block unwanted [migrant] flows, but rather lead to a re-routing of migrants to other paths,” wrote Élisabeth Vallet of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in a 2022 report.
Those sorts of objections have done nothing to deter Abbott and GOP lawmakers, who are armed with a huge budget surplus and polling that shows a majority of Texas voters support the state's wall effort and overall border spending. More than 90% of Republican voters support the wall, with 74% voicing “strong” support, according to an April poll by the Texas Politics Project.
With construction plunging ahead, Novak has projected confidence about the wall's status, pointing to the recent progress after an initial slow start, which saw officials build less than 2 miles in the 12 months after Abbott announced the effort.
It's not just land access that complicates wall construction, Novak said at the June TFC meeting, where he ticked off a list of other factors: changing soil conditions that require “complicated engineering solutions”; steering clear of irrigation systems when building on agricultural land; weather; and “sensitivity” to cattle, oil and gas and hunting operations.
“It's a difficult and complex task, at best,” Novak said. “But with that said, we're whipping it. The latest stats reflect what I like to call just steadfast progress.”
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Biden administration proposes rule to prevent heat injuries
by By Asad Jung, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-02 17:27:33
SUMMARY: The Biden-Harris administration proposed a rule to protect workers from extreme heat, following increased heat-related hazards for Texas employees like construction workers and cooks. The rule mandates employers to create plans preventing heat injuries, ensuring water access, rest breaks, and controlling indoor heat. Rep. Greg Casar, advocating for a federal heat standard, supports the proposal, anticipating its finalization by next summer. This rule follows Texas' HB 2127, which eliminated local ordinances for mandatory water breaks. Climate change has intensified heat in Texas, leading to record temperatures and deadly outcomes. At least 300 people died from heat in Texas last year, highlighting the need for protective measures.
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Above-normal high temperatures in recent summers have been outright dangerous for construction workers, kitchen cooks and other Texas employees who may be at risk for hazardous heat exposure.
But some relief may be on the way after the Biden-Harris administration announced a proposed rule Tuesday that aims to protect millions of workers from the risks of extreme heat.
The rule would require employers to develop a plan to prevent heat injuries and illnesses in workplaces and make sure their employees can access drinking water, get rest breaks and control indoor heat. It would apply to all employers conducting indoor or outdoor work in construction, agriculture and other sectors where the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has jurisdiction.
Before going into effect, OSHA must publish the proposal publicly and establish a period to collect public input.
“In many ways, this decades-long fight in Texas is helping expand workers' rights nationwide,” said U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, who has advocated for a federal workplace heat standard and rest and water breaks in Texas.
Casar led a thirst strike at the U.S. Capitol a year ago to draw attention to the issue. Casar hopes the Biden administration's proposed rule will be finalized by next summer.
The proposed federal requirements come a year after Texas legislators passed House Bill 2127, which barred cities and counties from passing local ordinances that go further than state law in several areas — from labor and finance to agriculture and natural resources.
HB 2127 eliminated ordinances in Austin and Dallas that established mandatory water breaks for construction workers. Supporters of the law said those kinds of ordinances bogged down businesses and created inconsistent standards across the state.
Climate change driven by humans burning fossil fuels is pushing temperatures higher in Texas. Last year was the hottest on record in the state. The state climatologist expects average temperatures and the number of triple-digit days will continue to rise.
Heat is deadly. It's known as a silent killer because its impacts are more nuanced than a tornado or a fire. But heat kills more people than any other type of weather, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. At least 300 people died in Texas last year from the heat, more than in any other year on record. Most of the deaths happened in populous metro regions, like Houston and Dallas Fort-Worth, as well as in border regions.
“We know that temperatures will continue to go up. So these protections need to be in place,” said Ana Gonzalez, deputy director of policy and politics at the Texas AFL-CIO.
Emily Foxhall contributed to this story.
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U.S. Supreme Court rejects Texas death row inmate’s petition
by By Pooja Salhotra, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-02 14:51:35
SUMMARY: The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the murder case of Rodney Reed, who has maintained innocence for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites. Convicted in 1998, Reed's guilt has been questioned with accusations aimed at Stites' fiancé, Jimmy Fennell. Although Texas halted Reed's execution in 2019 for further review, the courts denied a new trial. However, the Supreme Court allowed Reed to pursue DNA testing on crime scene evidence. Reed's attorneys continue to fight for justice, asserting his innocence. Meanwhile, Stites' family insists on Reed's guilt. Both Reed and Fennell have faced accusations of sexual assaults.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to give Rodney Reed the chance to have his murder case reviewed, delivering a blow to the death row inmate who has for more than a quarter century maintained that he is innocent of the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites.
Reed, a Black man, was convicted in 1998 of killing a 19-year-old white woman in the Central Texas town of Bastrop. For years, Reed's guilt has been questioned, with his supporters pointing blame at Stites' fiance, Jimmy Fennell.
In 2019, Texas' highest criminal court halted Reed's execution, sending the case back to the trial court for further review. But a district judge ruled against granting Reed a new trial in 2021, and two years later the state's highest criminal court also rejected Reed's claims of innocence.
Without offering any comment, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Reed's petition for a writ of certiorari, which would have ordered the lower court to deliver the case records to the higher court for review.
The ruling does not mean that Reed's execution will immediately be scheduled. In another appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court last year sided with Reed, who is now 56, and cleared the way for his team to pursue DNA testing on crime scene evidence that his attorney's said could exonerate him.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in that case in August, Reed's legal team said.
“[Reed] has litigation pending in several courts and his legal team is continuing to pursue all available avenues to secure his relief,” said Parker Rider-Longmaid, an attorney representing Reed. “Mr. Reed's legal fight to test key DNA evidence and prove his innocence is far from over.”
Reed's attorneys maintain that their client was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. They say that Reed was having an affair with Stites and that the courts have not allowed for DNA testing of crucial evidence, including the belt used to strangle Stites.
Stites' sister, Debra Oliver, meanwhile, said that Reed is guilty and should accept responsibility for the crime.
“It is time to stop retraumatizing Stacey's loved ones for the benefit of activists and those seeking notoriety from this nightmare,” the statement said.
Oliver also said that Reed is guilty of raping her sister, who she says had no romantic relationship with Reed.
Both Reed and Stites' fiance have been accused of multiple sexual assaults. Reed was indicted in several rape cases. Fennell spent 10 years in prison after he kidnapped and allegedly raped a woman while on duty as a police officer in 2007.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
The post U.S. Supreme Court rejects Texas death row inmate's petition appeared first on TexasTribune.org.
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