In the grand tradition of Texas politicians making a massive mess and leaving someone else to clean the carpet, the state’s 15th Court of Appeals abruptly scrapped oral arguments for four major cases after voters bounced all three Republican justices off the bench in the general election. Rather than spending their final weeks wrestling with complex constitutional questions, the lame-duck judges declared the cases will be reset “at a later date,” effectively punting the headache into the laps of the incoming Democrats who take over in January. Justice Scott Field admitted they already have 39 backlogged cases gathering dust while awaiting opinions, so rather than “waste the lawyers’ time” on hearings they have zero intention of resolving before packing up their offices, they just hit the judicial snooze button.
The centerpiece of this bureaucratic punt is the state’s crusade against hemp-derived THC—the single commodity keeping half the strip malls between 82nd Street and 19th Street economically solvent. The Texas Department of State Health Services had rolled out an assault of regulations featuring mandatory testing, new labels, child-resistant lids, and licensing fee hikes that jumped from $258 to $10,000 for manufacturers and from $155 to $5,000 for retailers. Industry leaders called the predatory price tag what it obviously was—a backdoor ban designed to starve smoke shops out of existence. While retailers briefly pulled products from the shelves in a panic, a Travis County judge slapped a temporary injunction on the rules back in April, setting up the appellate showdown that our outgoing jurists have now casually tossed into next year.
Naturally, the weed war wasn’t the only dumpster fire the bench abandoned on their way to the parking garage. The canceled docket also froze Attorney General Ken Paxton and Comptroller Don Huffines’ efforts to squeeze $3 million in sales taxes out of the City of Lancaster and claw back $2.58 million from Dave & Buster’s, not to mention a state lawsuit trying to classify a homeless shelter near a school as a “public nuisance”.
So while Austin regulators rack their brains trying to outlaw mild relaxation and extort adult arcades, you can sleep soundly knowing your favorite corner-store gummies are safe for a few more months—because what embodies the Texas spirit better than surviving entirely on judicial procrastination?
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