On this fine Tuesday, we certainly hope not. But attorneys for Kilgore ISD have likened their legal battle with local taxpayers to an episode of William Shatner’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” This famous Twilight Zone episode follows Shatner who is the only airline passenger to see a gremlin-type creature outside of his window seat. Was it there or not? Has Shatner gone mad? We may never know.
Why has Kilgore ISD entered another dimension? It all started in June of 2015, when the Board of Trustees voted to repeal the district’s local option homestead exemption (LOHE). That repeal came just fourteen days after Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill No. 1 (SB1), which prohibited districts from repealing their LOHE before the end of calendar year 2019. Kilgore ISD, along with many other districts, saw this coming and voted to repeal the LOHE before SB1 took full effect.
Well, a group of Kilgore ISD taxpayers took issue with that and sued, demanding their money back, along with attorneys’ fees, a permanent injunction, and a court declaration that repealing the LOHE violated the law.
The dispute has been tied up in court ever since, with this latest round of briefing filed in a second appeal after judgment was entered for the taxpayers. According to Kilgore ISD, like Shatner, it has found itself on a frightful journey as the “lone passenger” who applied the law as it was actually written and, for doing so, has been “spurned as evil and delusional.” The briefing opens with:
You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension of alternative realities, where sense may not be common, and statutes may simultaneously travel prospectively and retroactively. Welcome to the Texas Twilight Zone!
This is the first legal brief I’ve ever seen that includes a formal citation to a Twilight Zone episode. The way Kilgore ISD sees it, as it was written, SB1 was not meant to be applied retroactively. Grammar was ignored and statutory interpretation went awry, leading to the trial court’s conclusion that the district violated the constitution when it repealed the LOHE.
Attorney General Ken Paxton, who joined the plaintiffs in the suit, was not immune from attack in this latest round. “The Attorney General is a manipulative bully. The attorney, General, is a manipulative bully. As you can see, punctuation and grammar matter,” wrote the school district’s attorney. Kilgore ISD attorneys implore the appeals court to dust off their grammar books and apply the law as it is written, and not how it has been interpreted by the Attorney General and the trial court.
DAWG BONE: GRAMMAR IS IMPORTANT, EVEN FOR APPELLATE COURT JUDGES. ALSO, IF YOUR DISTRICT REPEALED ITS LOHE, YOU MIGHT WANT TO TALK TO YOUR SCHOOL ATTORNEY.
Tomorrow: It’s prom season and you know what that means….