A nonprofit in Denton, Texas is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney genera; who is attempting to thwart a voter-approved marijuana ordinance.
Last week Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched lawsuits against the cities of Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin, and Denton for adopting amnesty and non-prosecution policies for marijuana that he says “violate Texas laws concerning marijuana possession and distribution.” Now, the nonprofit organization Decriminalize Denton filed a petition of intervention today, making it a defendant in Paxton’s lawsuit against the city. The organization seeks to have Paxton’s lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that it has no legal standings, according to a Feb. 5 press release.
“Our goal in filing this Petition to Intervene is to get Paxton’s overreaching lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that it has no legal standing”, said Decriminalize Denton in a press release. “Because Denton’s City Manager & Police Chief have consistently refused to implement the ordinance since Day One, and because Denton City Council has consistently refused to make them, Paxton cannot show that the ordinance has harmed the state in any way, regardless of his erroneous claim that the ordinance violates state law.”
The group says that “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 existence. Furthermore, legal precedent makes clear that the mere possibility of future implementation of the ordinance by a future City Manager, Police Chief, and/or City Council is mere speculation, and as such cannot be recognized as proof of harm to any party in a court of law.”
The groups says that Paxton’s lawsuit is “nothing more than a desperate eleventh-hour political stunt, an overreaching and self-serving waste of state taxpayer’s money, intended to distract from his own mounting legal troubles over felony crimes farm more serious than misdemeanor cannabis or paraphernalia possession.”
The outcoming of Paxton’s lawsuit will play out in the coming weeks and months.
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