A Denton lawyer has filed a lawsuit against several defendants — including the city and a former council member — seeking declaratory relief, interim injunctive relief and permanent injunctive relief in regard to the District 4 council member’s upcoming recall election.
Richard Gladden
In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Richard Gladden lists as plaintiffs District 4 council member Alison Maguire, who is facing the recall election, Keri Caruthers, Tracy Runnels and Emily Meisner, all former District 4 — and now District 3 — voters who originally voted for Maguire in the May 2021 election. The defendants are Denton City Secretary Rosa Rios; former council member Donald Duff; the representative of the Committee of Electors; Frank Phillips, the Denton County elections administrator; and the city of Denton.
“In the event Plaintiff Maguire is removed from office based on the results of the recall election scheduled for November 8, 2022, she, along with Plaintiffs Caruthers, Runnels and Meisner, who are all residents and registered voters in former District 4 … will be deprived of equal representation on the Denton City Council, in relation to all other Denton city voters, for approximately 6 months,” Gladden wrote in his lawsuit. “This is so because under applicable provisions of the Denton City Charter and the Texas Election Code no election to fill the vacancy created by the removal of Plaintiff Maguire could lawfully occur until the next uniform election date, which is May 6, 2023.”
According to the city, those plaintiffs are now represented by District 3 council member Jess Davis, and it will be Robson Ranch voters in District 4 who will not have representation for six months if Maguire is recalled.
At the time of this report, the defendants had not been served with the lawsuit.
“If one is received, it will be reviewed by the City and more information may be available in the future,” Ryan Adams, a city spokesperson, wrote in a Thursday afternoon email.
The Denton Record-Chronicle contacted former council member Duff for comment.
Don Duff
“I don’t see how he has any basis [for the lawsuit],” Duff said. “[Robson Ranch] got gerrymandered into District 4. We are district 4.
“I talked to less than 800 people, and I spent no more than 15 seconds with any of them, and 740 of them signed the petition (which is what the charter requires). So as far as I’m concerned, the case is closed.”
“Their current constituency to represent are the people who elected them and doesn’t change until their term is up,” Gladden said. “The City Council can’t change the constituency until their term expires or they’re recalled or resign.”
The crux of Gladden’s lawsuit, he said, relies on how a judge will define Article IV, 4.13 of the Denton City Charter, which states:
“… whether the [recall] petition is signed by qualified voters of the constituency of the council member whose removal is sought equal in number to at least twenty-five (25) percent of the number of the votes cast for that council member and all of his opponents in the last preceding general municipal election in which he was a candidate. As used herein ‘constituency’ shall mean the qualified voters eligible to vote for the council member whose removal is sought, either by geographical district or at large, as the case may be.”
In the lawsuit, Gladden argues that defendant Duff and a majority of the signees from Robson Ranch who seek to recall Maguire aren’t allowed to do so since they didn’t vote for her in the May 2021 election. At the time, Robson Ranch was located in District 3. In December, City Council voted to place Robson Ranch in District 4.
The city claimed the redistricting went into immediate effect. But Gladden claims that the redrawn district lines don’t change Maguire’s old District 4 constituency until her term expires in May 2023.
The city disagreed with Gladden when the Record-Chronicle posed a question that had been asked of Gladden. The question was simple: If we lived in Robson Ranch, which is now District 4, and had a problem that needed to be addressed, do we contact the representative we had voted for — Jesse Davis in District 3 — or our new representative, Alison Maguire in District 4, whom we didn’t vote for?
In a follow-up email Thursday, Adams wrote, “The new district boundaries took effect upon adoption in December. To use your example, Robson Ranch is currently part of District 4.”
So the question seems to be: Do the new District 4 voters, which includes Robson Ranch, have the right to recall a council member they didn’t vote for yet represents their interests?
“I think the matter is still up for debate,” Maguire said in a Thursday afternoon phone call. “It is very much an open question in this transitional period and a matter for a judge to settle.”
Maguire said the recall effort against her started long before she shared a controversial meme in January and shortly after she won her election in May 2021. She pointed out the City Charter has a six-month grace period after a person is elected before a recall can be initiated.
Alison Maguire
It didn’t start picking up steam, Maguire said, until January shortly after the district lines were redrawn. Maguire had written and shared a post on social media calling out District 6 council member Chris Watts, also the former Denton mayor, for not prioritizing the DCTA bus ridership program when he was a community leader. Maguire said Watts’ failure to act caused the problems with low ridership.
As Denton mayor, Watts worked with DCTA and a nationally renowned transportation consultant to create GoZone cars, which has faced several issues from long wait times to upgraded training. In September, Watts wrote a guest essay for the Record-Chronicle in which he introduced the GoZone plan to readers and called it “a solution that would improve service, increase convenience and serve a larger population for lower cost than the current fixed-route bus system.”
In her Jan. 17 post, Maguire shared a meme depicting a Black man shooting another Black man in a chair. She wrote Chris Watts’ name for the Black man pulling the trigger and depicted DCTA as the Black man being shot.
“It’s almost as if he doesn’t actually WANT to increase ridership,” she wrote. “It’s almost as if he REALLY wants to drive the agency into the ground so it can be privatized. Once the agency no longer provides public transportation, the sales tax revenue Denton sends to DCTA can be reallocated to tax incentives. Chris Watts believes that giving tax breaks to businesses is more important than building an effective mass transit system. Replacing unionized bus drivers with underpaid gig workers is just the icing on the cake for him.”
Maguire said Thursday that Watts was trying to eliminate the bus ridership program and has been trying to do so for a long time.
“It’s an argument that [Denton voters] have resoundly objected to,” Maguire said. “They want to continue having a bus service in the city of Denton.”
When Duff first saw the meme posted on social media, he claimed he was really offended on several levels.
“I don’t see making a point with gun violence,” he said. “Shooting a Black man in a chair is a racial kind of thing. It has no place here.”
Duff said he started showing Maguire’s meme to several people he claims had similar reactions. “Oh my God, you got be kidding. That is terrible,” he recalled them saying.
Watts was livid when he discovered what a future fellow councilperson had posted. He appeared in front of City Council in early February to discuss it during the open mic portion of the meeting. He pointed out that Maguire had shared the meme on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and that council member Brian Beck and former council members Paul Meltzer and Deb Armintor had liked the post and never told her it was inappropriate. He described the meme for council members, though it was also shown on the overhead projector.
Chris Watts
“I understand this is a popular meme, and I understand that this is a celebrity,” he told council members. “But I’ve never seen a sitting council member use this kind of imagery to present their political positions. … This imagery is offensive. It is about as tone deaf as you can get. It’s not a lack of judgment. It’s an absence of judgment to use imagery of gun violence and death to present your political position. Of all the things that someone could choose, why this one?
“If those four council members worked for a private corporation, you would be fired almost immediately for this kind of representation,” he added. “I don’t think this is what the community expects from our elected leaders.”
Watts also pointed out Maguire took it down and said he had heard her rationale was that it was a distraction from her message about Watts and DCTA bus ridership and worried she and the other council members hadn’t learned anything from the experience. He called it very self-centered if it were true and not what representation is about.
“I’ve been a victim of gun violence,” he said. “Eighteen years old, a guy puts a gun to my side. I figured I probably wouldn’t make it past that night. But I did. So this kind of imagery, I don’t care if my name is on it or not, it’s about using this to represent something and trivializing gun violence in our country.”
Watts ended his rebuttal with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr’s 1968 speech in Washington, D.C.:
“On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, it is right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
No hearings on the lawsuit have yet been scheduled, which was filed in the 431st District Court.
