Texas
Law barring state investment in firms boycotting fossil fuels declared unconstitutional
A federal district judge on Wednesday declared a 2021 law restricting state investments in companies boycotting the fossil fuel industry unconstitutional, calling it “facially overbroad” and citing First and Fourteenth Amendment concerns.
Legislators passed Senate Bill 13 as a way of discouraging divestment from oil and gas companies, as financial figureheads at the time had signaled they intended to make climate change initiatives a larger factor in their investment considerations. The law requires the comptroller’s office to maintain a list of financial firms that refuse, terminate or penalize business with a fossil fuel company “without ordinary business purpose.” SB 13 is commonly referred to as an “anti-ESG” law, which stands for “environmental, social and governance.”
U.S. District Judge Alan Albright delivered the summary judgment, and affirmed in the 12-page order that the way SB 13 determined what constituted boycotting a company was too broad and undermined free speech protections of firms affected.
“SB 13’s ‘boycotting’ definition is comprised of three clauses, all of which are undefined and not susceptible to objective measurement or determination,” Albright wrote in the ruling.
Albright also wrote that the law had already led to “discriminatory enforcement” of its provisions. After SB 13 was passed, huge state investment funds, including the Teacher Retirement System of Texas and the Texas Permanent School Fund, divested billions from firms.
The Texas Comptroller’s office maintains a publicly available list of more than 300 companies they identified as boycotting energy companies, which was last updated in June. During that update, BlackRock, one of the largest international investment firms, was removed from the list after it excused itself from two major climate initiatives. Then-state Comptroller Glenn Hegar lauded the move as a “meaningful victory” for Texas’ economy.
The American Sustainable Business Coalition filed the suit in 2024 against Hegar and Attorney General Ken Paxton, alleging five different counts of free speech and due process violations. The ASBC subsequently moved for summary judgment on three of those claims in January 2025, and Albright ruled in their favor for all three Wednesday.
In a statement, David Levine, ASBC president and co-founder, said SB 13 had already cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars and called the ruling a “massive win” for sustainable businesses.
Supporters of the suit praised the judge’s ruling as a win for state workers. Tim Hill, president of the Alliance for Prosperity and a Secure Retirement, called the ruling a victory for current and future retirees in the state.
Oregon
ICE agents can’t make warrantless arrests unless there’s a risk of escape, federal judge rules
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — U.S. immigration agents in Oregon must stop arresting people without warrants unless there’s a likelihood of escape, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai issued a preliminary injunction in a proposed class-action lawsuit targeting the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of arresting immigrants they happen to come across while conducting ramped-up enforcement operations — which critics have described as “arrest first, justify later.”
The department, which is named as a defendant in the suit, did not immediately comment in response to a request from The Associated Press.
Similar actions, including immigration agents entering private property without a warrant issued by a court, have drawn concern from civil rights groups across the country amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
Courts in Colorado and Washington, D.C., have issued rulings like Kasubhai’s, and the government has appealed them.
In a memo last week, Todd Lyons, the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, emphasized that agents should not make an arrest without an administrative arrest warrant issued by a supervisor unless they develop probable cause to believe that the person is in the U.S. illegally and likely to escape from the scene before a warrant can be obtained.
But the judge heard evidence that agents in Oregon have arrested people in immigration sweeps without such warrants or determining escape was likely.
The daylong hearing included testimony from one plaintiff, Victor Cruz Gamez, a 56-year-old grandfather who has been in the U.S. since 1999. He told the court he was arrested and held in an immigration detention facility for three weeks even though he has a valid work permit and a pending visa application.
Cruz Gamez testified that he was driving home from work in October when he was pulled over by immigration agents. Despite showing his driver’s license and work permit, he was detained and taken to the ICE building in Portland before being sent to an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington. After three weeks there, he was set to be deported until a lawyer secured his release, he said.
He teared up as he recounted how the arrest impacted his family, especially his wife. Once he was home they did not open the door for three weeks out of fear and one of his grandchildren did not want to go to school, he said through a Spanish interpreter.
Afterward a lawyer for the federal government told Cruz Gamez he was sorry about what he went through and the effect it had on them.
Kasubhai said the actions of agents in Oregon — including drawing guns on people while detaining them for civil immigration violations — have been “violent and brutal,” and he was concerned about the administration denying due process to those swept up in immigration raids.
The lawsuit was brought by the nonprofit law firm Innovation Law Lab, whose executive director, Stephen Manning, said he was confident the case will be a “catalyst for change here in Oregon.”
The preliminary injunction will remain in effect while the lawsuit proceeds.
Texas
Professor files lawsuit after firing over gender identity lesson
HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas A&M University professor who was fired last year after a controversy over a classroom video that showed a student objecting to a children’s literature lesson about gender identity sued the school on Wednesday, alleging the university violated her rights by bowing to political pressure calling for her ouster.
Melissa McCoul was a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience. Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, had called for her termination after seeing the video, which showed a student questioning whether the class discussion last July was legal under President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender.
The video roiled the campus and led to sharp criticism of university president Mark Welsh, who later resigned, but didn’t offer a reason and never mentioned the video in his resignation announcement.
The university upheld McCoul’s firing even after two separate, independent university groups determined Texas A&M violated her right to due process and did not have cause to terminate her employment.
“Today I did something that would have been inconceivable a year ago – I’ve sued Texas A&M to hold it accountable for violations of my Constitutional rights to free speech and due process of law. There’s no satisfaction in doing this, only sadness,” McCoul said in a statement. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Houston.
Named in the lawsuit as defendants were Welsh, Interim President Tommy Williams, Texas A&M University System Chancellor Glenn Hegar and the Texas A&M System’s Board of Regents.
After McCoul’s firing, Hegar ordered an audit of courses at all 12 schools in the system.
McCoul’s lawsuit comes less than a week after Texas A&M University announced it is ending its women’s and gender studies program, changing the syllabuses of hundreds of courses and canceling six classes as part of a new policy that limits how professors can discuss some race and gender topics.
Other university systems in Texas have also placed restrictions on classroom instruction or have begun internal reviews of course offerings following a new state law.
In her lawsuit, McCoul pushed back on claims by Texas A&M officials that she failed to follow instructions to change her course content to align with the course catalog description. McCoul said her course content was “100 percent aligned with the catalog description, course description.”
McCoul described teaching at Texas A&M as her “dream job.” She had been at the university since 2017. In her lawsuit, she is seeking reinstatement and monetary damages.
Colorado
Parents of school shooter won’t face gun charges, sheriff’s office says
DENVER (AP) — The parents of a 16-year-old boy who wounded two students at a Colorado high school with an old revolver his family said was kept in a locked gun safe won’t be charged with any crimes, authorities said Wednesday.
Investigators looked at whether the parents of Desmond Holly, who killed himself after opening fire, could possibly be charged with allowing access to the Smith & Wesson .38 special revolver or for not storing it safely, but decided there wasn’t enough evidence for that, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said.
Holly shot himself after opening fire at Evergreen High School on Sept. 10 and later died.
Investigators didn’t find the parents’ DNA on the gun after getting a court order to collect DNA samples from them, the sheriff’s office said. It said the family’s lawyer recently told investigators that the gun, described as a family heirloom that had been owned by a grandparent, was kept stored near the back of a large, locked gun safe, the office said. Holly didn’t have access to the safe except for brief times when it was opened by his father, according to the lawyer.
The family’s lawyer, Douglas Richards, told The Associated Press the family believes Holly must have secretly taken the gun, which was never used, from the safe while he was cleaning other firearms with his father.
The sheriff’s office said investigators weren’t able to speak with the parents. Richards said the parents spoke with authorities right after the shooting and later answered questions in writing because he didn’t want them interviewed further unless there was a prosecutor present.
Investigators believe Holly randomly shot at students at the high school in the foothills about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Denver, sheriff’s office spokesperson Jacki Kelley said Wednesday.
At the time, the sheriff’s office said that Holly had been radicalized by an unspecified “extremist network.”
Kelley said the investigation showed that Holly had an obsession with other school shooters and had engaged with a mix of online groups but was not committed to any particular kind of radicalization. She referred further questions about those findings to the FBI, which handled that portion of the probe. The agency said a reporter would have to file a records request to obtain more information.
A report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found that Holly had been active on an online forum where users watch videos of killings and violence, mixed in with content on white supremacism and antisemitism. It found Holly was also fascinated with previous mass shootings including the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that killed 14 people, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from Evergreen.
Law barring state investment in firms boycotting fossil fuels declared unconstitutional
A federal district judge on Wednesday declared a 2021 law restricting state investments in companies boycotting the fossil fuel industry unconstitutional, calling it “facially overbroad” and citing First and Fourteenth Amendment concerns.
Legislators passed Senate Bill 13 as a way of discouraging divestment from oil and gas companies, as financial figureheads at the time had signaled they intended to make climate change initiatives a larger factor in their investment considerations. The law requires the comptroller’s office to maintain a list of financial firms that refuse, terminate or penalize business with a fossil fuel company “without ordinary business purpose.” SB 13 is commonly referred to as an “anti-ESG” law, which stands for “environmental, social and governance.”
U.S. District Judge Alan Albright delivered the summary judgment, and affirmed in the 12-page order that the way SB 13 determined what constituted boycotting a company was too broad and undermined free speech protections of firms affected.
“SB 13’s ‘boycotting’ definition is comprised of three clauses, all of which are undefined and not susceptible to objective measurement or determination,” Albright wrote in the ruling.
Albright also wrote that the law had already led to “discriminatory enforcement” of its provisions. After SB 13 was passed, huge state investment funds, including the Teacher Retirement System of Texas and the Texas Permanent School Fund, divested billions from firms.
The Texas Comptroller’s office maintains a publicly available list of more than 300 companies they identified as boycotting energy companies, which was last updated in June. During that update, BlackRock, one of the largest international investment firms, was removed from the list after it excused itself from two major climate initiatives. Then-state Comptroller Glenn Hegar lauded the move as a “meaningful victory” for Texas’ economy.
The American Sustainable Business Coalition filed the suit in 2024 against Hegar and Attorney General Ken Paxton, alleging five different counts of free speech and due process violations. The ASBC subsequently moved for summary judgment on three of those claims in January 2025, and Albright ruled in their favor for all three Wednesday.
In a statement, David Levine, ASBC president and co-founder, said SB 13 had already cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars and called the ruling a “massive win” for sustainable businesses.
Supporters of the suit praised the judge’s ruling as a win for state workers. Tim Hill, president of the Alliance for Prosperity and a Secure Retirement, called the ruling a victory for current and future retirees in the state.
Oregon
ICE agents can’t make warrantless arrests unless there’s a risk of escape, federal judge rules
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — U.S. immigration agents in Oregon must stop arresting people without warrants unless there’s a likelihood of escape, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai issued a preliminary injunction in a proposed class-action lawsuit targeting the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of arresting immigrants they happen to come across while conducting ramped-up enforcement operations — which critics have described as “arrest first, justify later.”
The department, which is named as a defendant in the suit, did not immediately comment in response to a request from The Associated Press.
Similar actions, including immigration agents entering private property without a warrant issued by a court, have drawn concern from civil rights groups across the country amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
Courts in Colorado and Washington, D.C., have issued rulings like Kasubhai’s, and the government has appealed them.
In a memo last week, Todd Lyons, the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, emphasized that agents should not make an arrest without an administrative arrest warrant issued by a supervisor unless they develop probable cause to believe that the person is in the U.S. illegally and likely to escape from the scene before a warrant can be obtained.
But the judge heard evidence that agents in Oregon have arrested people in immigration sweeps without such warrants or determining escape was likely.
The daylong hearing included testimony from one plaintiff, Victor Cruz Gamez, a 56-year-old grandfather who has been in the U.S. since 1999. He told the court he was arrested and held in an immigration detention facility for three weeks even though he has a valid work permit and a pending visa application.
Cruz Gamez testified that he was driving home from work in October when he was pulled over by immigration agents. Despite showing his driver’s license and work permit, he was detained and taken to the ICE building in Portland before being sent to an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington. After three weeks there, he was set to be deported until a lawyer secured his release, he said.
He teared up as he recounted how the arrest impacted his family, especially his wife. Once he was home they did not open the door for three weeks out of fear and one of his grandchildren did not want to go to school, he said through a Spanish interpreter.
Afterward a lawyer for the federal government told Cruz Gamez he was sorry about what he went through and the effect it had on them.
Kasubhai said the actions of agents in Oregon — including drawing guns on people while detaining them for civil immigration violations — have been “violent and brutal,” and he was concerned about the administration denying due process to those swept up in immigration raids.
The lawsuit was brought by the nonprofit law firm Innovation Law Lab, whose executive director, Stephen Manning, said he was confident the case will be a “catalyst for change here in Oregon.”
The preliminary injunction will remain in effect while the lawsuit proceeds.
Texas
Professor files lawsuit after firing over gender identity lesson
HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas A&M University professor who was fired last year after a controversy over a classroom video that showed a student objecting to a children’s literature lesson about gender identity sued the school on Wednesday, alleging the university violated her rights by bowing to political pressure calling for her ouster.
Melissa McCoul was a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience. Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, had called for her termination after seeing the video, which showed a student questioning whether the class discussion last July was legal under President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender.
The video roiled the campus and led to sharp criticism of university president Mark Welsh, who later resigned, but didn’t offer a reason and never mentioned the video in his resignation announcement.
The university upheld McCoul’s firing even after two separate, independent university groups determined Texas A&M violated her right to due process and did not have cause to terminate her employment.
“Today I did something that would have been inconceivable a year ago – I’ve sued Texas A&M to hold it accountable for violations of my Constitutional rights to free speech and due process of law. There’s no satisfaction in doing this, only sadness,” McCoul said in a statement. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Houston.
Named in the lawsuit as defendants were Welsh, Interim President Tommy Williams, Texas A&M University System Chancellor Glenn Hegar and the Texas A&M System’s Board of Regents.
After McCoul’s firing, Hegar ordered an audit of courses at all 12 schools in the system.
McCoul’s lawsuit comes less than a week after Texas A&M University announced it is ending its women’s and gender studies program, changing the syllabuses of hundreds of courses and canceling six classes as part of a new policy that limits how professors can discuss some race and gender topics.
Other university systems in Texas have also placed restrictions on classroom instruction or have begun internal reviews of course offerings following a new state law.
In her lawsuit, McCoul pushed back on claims by Texas A&M officials that she failed to follow instructions to change her course content to align with the course catalog description. McCoul said her course content was “100 percent aligned with the catalog description, course description.”
McCoul described teaching at Texas A&M as her “dream job.” She had been at the university since 2017. In her lawsuit, she is seeking reinstatement and monetary damages.
Colorado
Parents of school shooter won’t face gun charges, sheriff’s office says
DENVER (AP) — The parents of a 16-year-old boy who wounded two students at a Colorado high school with an old revolver his family said was kept in a locked gun safe won’t be charged with any crimes, authorities said Wednesday.
Investigators looked at whether the parents of Desmond Holly, who killed himself after opening fire, could possibly be charged with allowing access to the Smith & Wesson .38 special revolver or for not storing it safely, but decided there wasn’t enough evidence for that, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said.
Holly shot himself after opening fire at Evergreen High School on Sept. 10 and later died.
Investigators didn’t find the parents’ DNA on the gun after getting a court order to collect DNA samples from them, the sheriff’s office said. It said the family’s lawyer recently told investigators that the gun, described as a family heirloom that had been owned by a grandparent, was kept stored near the back of a large, locked gun safe, the office said. Holly didn’t have access to the safe except for brief times when it was opened by his father, according to the lawyer.
The family’s lawyer, Douglas Richards, told The Associated Press the family believes Holly must have secretly taken the gun, which was never used, from the safe while he was cleaning other firearms with his father.
The sheriff’s office said investigators weren’t able to speak with the parents. Richards said the parents spoke with authorities right after the shooting and later answered questions in writing because he didn’t want them interviewed further unless there was a prosecutor present.
Investigators believe Holly randomly shot at students at the high school in the foothills about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Denver, sheriff’s office spokesperson Jacki Kelley said Wednesday.
At the time, the sheriff’s office said that Holly had been radicalized by an unspecified “extremist network.”
Kelley said the investigation showed that Holly had an obsession with other school shooters and had engaged with a mix of online groups but was not committed to any particular kind of radicalization. She referred further questions about those findings to the FBI, which handled that portion of the probe. The agency said a reporter would have to file a records request to obtain more information.
A report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found that Holly had been active on an online forum where users watch videos of killings and violence, mixed in with content on white supremacism and antisemitism. It found Holly was also fascinated with previous mass shootings including the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that killed 14 people, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from Evergreen.
