Attorney General Ken Paxton asked Texas’ court of last resort to overturn the state fair’s gun ban Wednesday.
Paxton’s appeal to the Supreme Court of Texas is his third attempt to have the ban overturned after a trial court and a lower appeals court rejected his requests to block it before the fair opens Friday.
A Dallas County district judge ruled the fair’s new firearm policy could stay in place during an injunction hearing last week. Paxton swiftly appealed the decision to the state’s new 15th Court of Appeals, which exclusively handles cases involving the state and state agencies. Judges there rejected Paxton’s emergency appeal Tuesday without issuing an opinion.
The policy was put in place for the first time this year in response to a shooting at last year’s fair that injured three people.
Throughout the course of Paxton’s lawsuit against the State Fair of Texas and the city of Dallas, the attorney general has argued Dallas officials are effectively acting through the State Fair organization to ban guns from the city-owned Fair Park — which he says is illegal.
Texas law forbids government agencies from banning licensed handgun owners from government owned or leased property. The State Fair leases Fair Park from Dallas to host its annual event.
In his office’s petition to the Supreme Court, Paxton said in part the city was violating the law by allowing the Dallas Police Department to enforce the ban.
“Because the City owns the property on which the state fair is held and apparently intends to allow DPD to assist with enforcing SFOT's no-gun rule, its conduct violates state law,” the petition says.
That argument didn’t persuade other courts to toss the ban. During a hearing in Dallas, defense attorneys successfully argued the officers were being paid by the fair — not the city — which means city officials didn’t have a role in enacting the ban.
Attorneys also sought to use the attorney general’s own words against him. In a 2016 opinion, Paxton said local governments are not liable when private businesses ban guns on government-owned property.
Paxton withdrew that opinion two weeks ago amid his push to have the fair’s ban overturned.
But defense lawyers said the attorney general came to the right conclusion eight years ago.
“Typically, if opinions go away, it’s because they’re superseded by law,” Jeff Tillotson, an attorney for the city, told a Dallas County judge last week. “It has not been replaced, it’s not been said the logic was wrong, it was just withdrawn largely as a litigation tactic. We think that’s meaningful for the court here.”
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