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A state appeals court on Thursday denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s offer to drastically increase the $ 9,000 fine the city of Austin had for breaking state law in 2016 by banning firearms from town hall .
Paxton asked the 3rd Court of Appeals to increase the fine to $ 5.76 million, arguing that the $ 9,000 fine imposed by a trial judge in 2019 was equivalent to a “knock on the wrist.” Encourage cities across Texas to circumvent gun rights laws.
Austin, Paxton argued, continued to illegally ban guns from town hall for 577 consecutive working days from July 2016 to January 2019.
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The appeals court objected and upheld a $ 1,500 per day fine set by state District Judge Lora Livingston, who ruled Austin violated the Gun Access Act for six days in 2016.
“We cannot conclude that the attorney general’s evidence has conclusively established the suspicion of an ongoing violation … (over) the 577 days,” said Judge Melissa Goodwin’s opinion, the only Republican who complained on the 3rd.
Paxton has appeal to the Texas Republican Supreme Court.
Austin banned guns from downtown City Hall after Senate Law 273 was passed
In 2015, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 273, which allowed cities and counties to ban weapons only in certain government buildings, including courthouses and those that serve school functions.
Austin banned guns from downtown town hall and said rooms are regularly used as community court and teenage court, with signs etched in glass at the entrances showing a handgun with a line through them. Security forces enforced the ban.
Michael Cargill, a local gun shop owner who had a covert gun permit, complained that he was prevented from entering City Hall three times in April 2016 in violation of SB 273. An attorney general investigator investigating Cargill’s complaint upheld the gun ban on three more days.
After a two-day trial, Livingston decided that guns could be banned if parts of the town hall are used as a courtroom, which only happens several days a month but cannot be banned continuously on other days.
Livingston fined Austin $ 9,000 to $ 1,500 for each of the six days Cargill and Paxton’s investigators were denied entry for carrying a handgun.
Austin chose not to appeal the verdict, but Paxton did, arguing that the city had broken the law for 577 days and that the trial judge had to impose the maximum fine of $ 10,000 for each day the city was in break the law.
The 3rd court of appeal contradicted this.
First, according to the appeals court, Livingston duly limited her sentence to the six days on which an armed person was denied entry to town hall. State law is triggered when gun owners are notified that they cannot enter a building; an etched glass representation of a weapon with a line through it does not meet the notification requirement of the law, wrote Goodwin.
Second, Paxton’s attorneys specifically called for a $ 1,500 a day fine when they sued Austin, then argued during the trial that the city should be fined $ 1,500 for every day it violated the Access Act offends against weapons.
Unless prosecutors urged the judge to fine them $ 10,000 a day, Paxton will not be able to raise the issue for the first time on appeal, Goodwin wrote.
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