Thread: TX: LULAC drops suit vs. Support Farmers Branch

LULAC drops suit against backers of FB rule

06:16 PM CDT on Monday, April 23, 2007
By STEPHANIE SANDOVAL / The Dallas Morning News
ssandoval@dallasnews.com

The League of United Latin American Citizens has dropped a lawsuit against supporters of a proposed Farmers Branch ordinance targeting illegal immigrants.

The lawsuit, filed last month by Dallas attorney Domingo Garcia, alleged Farmers Branch resident Tom Bohmier and other members of Support Farmers Branch intimidated, harassed, threatened, made false accusations and filed false police reports against LULAC members as they campaigned against the ordinance.

The ordinance, which goes to voters May 12, would ban apartments from renting to most illegal immigrants by requiring the apartments to obtain proof of citizenship or eligible immigration status from tenants.

“We reached an agreement that all the parties were to campaign fairly and not harass or intimidate anybody,” Mr. Garcia said Monday.

Tim Scott, head of the Support Farmers Branch political action committee and a city council candidate, said that’s not the case.

“Domingo said let’s all get in a room and talk it out and decide we’re not going to behave this way anymore,” Mr. Scott said. “Our attorney said our client can’t stop doing something they never did… We reject the idea we were intimidating anyone.”

He said there was no agreement between the two sides.

“We kept pressing that either make this go away or we’ll get after it and argue that this is baseless and without merit. And it went away,” Mr. Scott said.

The lawsuit in the 160th District Court originally also named Mr. Scott, the city and Farmers Branch police Cpl. Terry Eoff as defendants, as well as Mr. Bohmier and the political action committee.. But just a day after filing the suit, Mr. Garcia revised the suit, dropping Mr. Scott, the city and the police officer from it.

The lawsuit was based largely on an affidavit from Elizabeth Villafranca, then president of the Farmers Branch chapter of LULAC. She has said she did not authorize Mr. Garcia to use the affidavit in the lawsuit, which she was opposed to filing.

Mr. Garcia subsequently removed her affidavit from the legal filing, and said he was authorized to file the suit by state and national LULAC leaders, including state Director Roger Rocha and national President Rosa Rosales.

On Monday, he said petitioning the court to drop the lawsuit was a LULAC group decision. He declined to say who was among the group.

“Once I speak to Domingo to be briefed on the situation, I would be glad to provide a comment,” Mr. Rocha said Monday afternoon.

Ms. Rosales did not immediately return a message left at her San Antonio office seeking comment.

“It’s fairly obvious the whole thing was meant to try to tie us up and slow us down and get us off message and waste or time, because it all went away,” Mr. Scott said.

Mr. Garcia disagreed.

“We had several sources saying Support Farmers Branch people were intimidating people, were putting out people’s personal phone numbers on the Internet, and those were attached to our pleadings,” Mr. Garcia said. “They speak for themselves. We want to focus on winning the election, and that’s what we’re going to focus on now.”

Love it, looks like LULAC had their bluff called.

Originally Posted by MW

Love it, looks like LULAC had their bluff called.

They are fully aware they really don't have a legal leg to stand on. I just hope that the judges in this country come to their senses and stop giving traitors such as the ACLU and others like them a leg to stand on.