6 February 15 - 21, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ▼ CANNABIS ‘THIS IS STUPID, KEN’ DENTON LOCALS SEEK TO DISMISS KEN PAXTON’S MARIJUANA SUIT. BY JACOB VAUGHN L ate last month, Attorney General Ken Paxton drummed up some contro- versy when he sued five cities over policies that decriminalized low levels of marijuana possession, asserting that the pol- icies are a violation of state law. Pot- and Texas-loving Austin podcaster Joe Rogan isn’t too happy about Paxton’s move. “Dude, listen, this is stupid, Ken,” Ro- gan said on his podcast this week. “Don’t get involved in this. This is a dumb perspective. The whole law is dumb.” Now, one North Texas group is fighting back. The grassroots group behind Denton’s marijuana decriminalization policy, De- criminalize Denton, has filed a petition of intervention as part of Paxton’s lawsuit. This makes Decriminalize Denton an affected party in the suit. Through this move, the group will try to get the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that it has no legal standing. Denton’s city manager and chief of police have refused to implement Prop B, the ballot initiative voters approved that decriminal- ized small amounts of marijuana in the city. The Denton City Council has also refused to enforce the ordinance. Because of this, the group says, Paxton can’t show that the ordi- nance has harmed the state in any way. “Legal precedent has long established that a law can only be said to do harm to any party upon its implementation, not by its mere exis- tence,” the group said in a press release last week. “We believe that Paxton’s recent deci- sion to belatedly sue Denton and several other Texas home-rule cities over their democrati- cally-decided misdemeanor cannabis enforce- ment policy ordinances is nothing more than a desperate eleventh-hour political stunt, an overreaching and self-serving waste of state taxpayers’ money, intended to distract from his own mounting legal troubles over felony crimes far more serious than misdemeanor cannabis or paraphernalia possession.” In addition to Denton, Paxton sued Austin, San Marcos, Killeen and Elgin, all of which have passed similar marijuana decriminaliza- tion policies. An organization called Ground Game Texas has been behind the efforts to de- criminalize marijuana in these cities. The or- dinances do a little more than just decriminalize low levels of marijuana. Nick Stevens, co-chair and spokesperson for Decriminalize Denton, said in Denton, for example, the ordinance bans citations and arrests for possession of up to 4 ounces of marijuana. On top of that, it prevents po- lice from using the smell test as probable cause to search. It also bars the city from funding THC tests. According to The Texas Tribune, the ordi- nances in each city had high levels of support. In Austin, 85% of voters were in favor of the ordinance; in San Marcos, 82%; in Elgin, nearly 75%; in Killeen, close to 70%; and in Denton, 71%. But still, Paxton has a beef with these five cities. “I will not stand idly by as cities run by pro-crime extremists deliberately violate Texas law and promote the use of illicit drugs that harm our communities,” Paxton said in a press release about his lawsuits. “This unconstitutional action by municipali- ties demonstrates why Texas must have a law to ‘follow the law.’ It’s quite simple: the legislature passes every law after a full de- bate on the issues, and we don’t allow cities the ability to create anarchy by picking and choosing the laws they enforce.” Deb Armintor, chair of Decriminalize Denton and a former city council member, said Paxton’s lawsuits are the perfect oppor- tunity for him to distract from his own very public legal difficulties. “I wondered ‘Why now?’” she said. “I can only speculate and my guess is simply that he’s pretty desperate.” Armintor said the ordinance has been on the books in Denton for two years, and longer in other cities. “It’s quite puzzling that he’s doing this at this particular time,” she said. The Denton City Council discussed Pax- ton’s lawsuit during a closed session at its meeting last week. Armintor said she’s not sure yet how the city will respond. The way she sees it, the city has three options: do nothing, fight back or repeal the ordinance entirely. Decriminalize Denton does not want the ordinance to be repealed. Armintor said the group is hoping the city will join them in trying to get the lawsuit dismissed. “It’s a completely groundless suit,” Armin- tor said. It’s still uncertain how each city will respond, but it seems the city of Killeen is ready to put up a fight. Bell County also sued the city of Killeen over its marijuana de- criminalization ordinance. Local attorney Philip Kingston is representing the city in the Bell County suit. Asked if the city was prepared to wave the white flag, Kingston told the Killeen Daily Herald: “Surrender to Ken Paxton? … We understand that the at- torney general has an agenda, but I recall when conservatism meant small govern- ment and allowing municipalities to govern themselves.” He added: “The people of Killeen made it extremely clear that they do not want low- level, non-violent possession of marijuana to put vulnerable people into the criminal jus- tice system. The city of Killeen has clear le- gal authority to enact that policy by local ordinance. Alleged criminal Ken Paxton and Bell County are wasting tax dollars pretend- ing otherwise.” Stevens said it’s important to note that Bell County had asked Paxton to get in- volved in its suit, but he declined. “All of the sudden, a change of heart,” Stevens said of Paxton’s lawsuits. In a statement to ABC affiliate KVUE, the city of Elgin said it has yet to be served. It, too, has yet to implement the decriminaliza- tion policy approved by voters. Austin City Council member Chito Vela weighed in on the lawsuit on X. “Not arrest- ing people found [with] small amounts of marijuana has saved countless hours of law enforcement’s time and lots of tax dollars,” Vela wrote. “It’s allowed police to focus on more serious offenses while they are short staffed. Decriminalizing marijuana IS pro- public safety!” Decriminalize Denton is urging Denton residents to reach out to their City Council members and the mayor to tell them not to repeal the ordinance and to work to get the lawsuit dismissed. ▼ STATE POLITICS SAY WHAT? ‘TEXIT’ LOVERS MAY NOT REALIZE THEY’D NO LONGER GET FEDERAL BENEIFTS. BY SIMONE CARTER P olitical experts have pretty well es- tablished that despite how mad Texas gets at the feds, we can’t just simply secede. Yet somehow the idea keeps crop- ping up in the mainstream, so much so that it’s getting platformed by White House con- tenders and foreign leaders. GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley recently argued that we can “Texit” if we want to. (She later backpedaled.) And one Russian official posted on X late last month that his country would be prepared to aid said split. The ongoing standoff between Gov. Greg Abbott and the Biden administration at the southern border has some conservatives sal- ivating over secession. Our dear state’s Re- publican Party has embraced the idea of sending the matter to a referendum. But some Texit supporters may not fully grasp the implications of such a monumen- tal move. Exhibit A: In a recent post that went vi- ral, a commenter in a social media group ti- tled “Texas Patriots for Secession” asked: “If we secede, do we still get our Social Security monthly checks?” Another popular X post by an Illinois Democrat running for U.S. Congress claims that if Texas broke free from the rest of the nation, we would miss out on more than $68 billion in federal aid. Texas was, once upon a time, its own country. That doesn’t mean reverting to the old days would be easy. Mark Hand, assistant professor of politi- cal science at the University of Texas at Ar- lington, explained that Texas joined the Union before committing to the Confeder- acy. After Texas’ side lost the Civil War, we came crawling back to our ex: the good ol’ U.S. of A. “None of that was foreordained — there was plenty of debate about whether to let Texas into the US at all, in the 1840s,” Hand wrote via email. “But the Civil War and the 1869 Supreme Court case Texas v. White settled the question pretty clearly: states cannot secede without congressional ap- proval. Texas might be able to split itself into five states without congressional authoriza- tion, but that’s untested.” Worth noting: The Southern Poverty Law Center has pointed out that certain seces- sion groups are inherently racist and anti- immigrant. Many Texit supporters deploy the same “invasion” rhetoric used by the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooter. To make good on any independence goals, we’d either need a green light from the feds or have to duke our way out, Hand said. Neither option is likely. Texas is a boon to the nation with an economy that ranks No. 8 in the world. Some major changes would be headed our way, though, if we did somehow succeed in breaking up with the U.S. Hand explained that, in addition to creat- ing its own social security program, the state would need to need to figure out health in- surance for older and/or low-income Tex- ans. An estimated one-third of the state’s budget is made up of federal dollars, accord- ing to one think tank. Texas would either need to ditch such federally funded pro- grams or tax residents to cover the costs, Hand said. “Texas doesn’t have income taxes, of course, so it’d probably have to come from higher property taxes or sales taxes,” he said. (We all know how much Texans love ponying up property taxes.) “And then it’d also have to raise enough money to build up its military ... What currency that would be in would have to get sorted out, too. Dollars? Pesos? Bitcoin? Gold?” As many folks are well aware, the state has its own electric grid. But Hand noted that the U.S. would then have a way to crash it without hurting any of the other states’ power provisions: “And it would have a clear list of obvious military targets. “A military would only be one of the many basic governmental functions Texas would have to add,” he continued. Texas leaders have recently taken aim at Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden and Mexi- can President Andrés Manuel López Obra- dor. Yet we’d now have to hammer out new Unfair Park from p4 Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
