The Work We Do

• Rusanowsky v. City of Dallas is a Section 1983 case brought by a photojournalist for wrongful arrest and First Amendment retaliation during the George Floyd protests.
• Monacelli v. City of Dallas is also a Section 1983 case brought by a photojournalist for wrongful detention during the George Floyd protests.
• Waggoner v. City of Dallas is a First Amendment challenge by homeless individuals, an academic researcher, and a community organizer to an ordinance prohibiting standing or walking on medians less than six feet wide or in clear zones
  adjacent to the street.
• Johnson v. Town of Prosper is a First Amendment retaliation and wrongful arrest case brought by a citizen who used a pseudonym to request information under the Texas Public Information Act.
• Jon Hohman involved writing a letter demanding that a City Councilman unblock our client from his official social media account.
• Human Rights Defense Center – Grayson County involves pre-filing work to investigate and research a challenge to the Grayson County Jail’s “no book” policy.
• Dallas Express v. Dallas Weekly is a defamation case in which we represent the defendant Black-owned weekly and its reporter.
• McQuilliams v. Goodboy Public Relations, LLC is a now-settled defamation case involving a protest against alleged sexual harassment claims being made against a local drive-in chain.
• Coleman v. Polk County Publishing Company is a defamation case, argued last month in the Texas Supreme Court, brought by a local assistant district attorney over an Page 6 of 11 article that raised questions about his actions in his official capacity.
• Oyenuga v. Sahara Reporters is a now-dismissed defamation case brought by a Nigerian-American pharmacist over three articles detailing his former business partners’ allegations of fraud against him.
• The Marshall Project Defamation Threat – CrimeStoppers of Houston, Inc. sent a retraction demand over an article co-reported by the Marshall Project and The New
  York Times about Crime Stoppers’ financial condition and political activism, but never filed suit.
• Dave Hendricks Defamation Threat – A city and several former and current city officials sent a retraction demand to Dave Hendricks and the Progress Times over an article detailing the allegations in a wrongful termination suit, but no lawsuit has been filed.
• Texas Public Radio Defamation Threat – A foster care contractor sent a retraction demand to Texas Public Radio concerning an article about the contractor’s suspension by the State after multiple investigations and negative findings, but no lawsuit has been filed.
• Villarreal v. City of Laredo (amicus brief) – For the Fifth Circuit en banc proceeding, we filed an amicus brief focusing on whether the required chilling effect to establish a First
  Amendment retaliation claim is objective or subjective (which is currently the subject of a circuit split).
• Netflix v. Babin (amicus brief) – We filed a Fifth Circuit brief supporting Netflix’s preliminary injunction against the continued state court prosecution for its distribution of the movie “Cuties.”
• Sealed Appellant v. Sealed Intervenor (amicus brief) – We filed a Fifth Circuit brief supporting Professor Volokh’s motion to unseal a civil case file.
• Henderson v. State (amicus brief) – We will soon file an amicus brief arguing that there was insufficient proof of mens rea to convict three Black Lives Matters protesters of
  obstructing a public passageway.
• NetChoice v. Paxton (amicus brief) – We have supported the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other First Amendment and tech non-profits in filing multiple amicus
  Page 7 of 11 briefs challenging Texas’s social media law and will soon begin collaboration on another amicus brief since the United States Supreme Court just granted certiorari in the case.
• Van Loon v. Department of Treasury (amicus brief) – We were Texas counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in filing an amicus brief challenging the Treasury Department’s placement of open-source software developer Tornado Cash on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list.

McQuilliams – see speech tab

Henderson v. State – see speech tab

Leo Johnson – see speech tab

Jon Hohman – see speech tab

Henderson v. State – see speech tab

• The True the Vote cases involved intervening on behalf of the Center for Investigative Reporting in two federal cases (one in the Southern District of Texas and one in the District of Columbia) to unseal court filings in two disputes involving donations and the tax status of election-denying PAC True the Vote. Since our original report, we won the motion to unseal in the Southern District of Texas.
• Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA – In this challenge to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, we successfully challenged the district court’s failures to post hearings on the docket and to give sufficient notice of those hearings to allow attendance by the press and the public.
• Bell County Courthouse Access Issues – We unsuccessfully challenged a standing order in Bell County which prohibits audio- and video-recording in the County Courthouse.
• Rusanowsky – see speech tab
• Monacelli – see speech tab
• HRDC – Grayson County – see speech tab

• State v. Mason is a still pending high-profile criminal prosecution of a Black woman for voting illegally in the 2016 election. We wrote several amicus briefs on behalf of the League of Women Voters and the NAACP.
• In addition to our TPIA Legislative Efforts, we worked with a State Senator to introduce a bill that would amend the Texas Citizens Participation Act to allow pro bono attorneys to recover attorney’s fees when their clients’ motion to dismiss is granted. I also testified on several TCPA-related bills.

Legislative Efforts (TPIA)– We worked successfully with the Sunshine Coalition on efforts to amend the Texas Public Information Act to achieve greater transparency by closing the “dead suspect loophole” and to derail antitransparency proposals.

• Gomez v. Memorial Hermann Hospital System was a private defamation case in which we wrote an amicus brief focusing on common law defamation issues in support of the Hospital which successfully reversed and rendered a $6M+ judgment obtained by a disgruntled doctor.
• Krass v. Obstacle Racing Media was a defamation case in which we assisted the University of Georgia First Amendment Clinic by representing a witness who filed a declaration in support of the Clinic client’s successful summary judgment motion.