State Fair to open with gun ban as Texas Supreme Court denies Ken Paxton’s final appeal – Houston Public Media

The Texas Supreme Court denied Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request to overturn the State Fair’s gun ban — the night before the fair opens.

In an opinion issued Thursday, Justice Jimmy Blacklock wrote that — despite suing over the ban — Paxton’s office “takes no position” on whether the State Fair itself, a private nonprofit, can legally exclude handgun carriers from the fair.

Throughout the course of Paxton’s lawsuit against the fair and the city of Dallas, the attorney general has argued Dallas officials are effectively acting through the State Fair organization to ban guns from the city-owned Fair Park — which he says is illegal.

“Even if that is true—and it may well be—this would not mean that handgun owners are entitled by law to carry their weapons at the State Fair despite the State Fair’s contrary policy,” the opinion reads. “On that pivotal question, the State’s filings are conspicuously silent.”

The ruling clears the way for the State Fair of Texas to legally ban fairgoers from bringing firearms into Fair Park, excluding active and qualified retired peace officers who show their credentials to officers at fair entrances.

Paxton’s appeal to the Supreme Court of Texas Wednesday was his third attempt to have the ban overturned after a trial court and a lower appeals court rejected his requests to block it.

A Dallas County district judge ruled the fair’s new firearm policy could stay in place during an injunction hearing last week. Paxton swiftly appealed the decision to the state’s new 15th Court of Appeals, which exclusively handles cases involving the state and state agencies. Judges there — all appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott — rejected Paxton’s emergency appeal Tuesday without issuing an opinion.

The policy was put in place for the first time this year in response to a shooting at last year’s fair that injured three people.

“We thank the Texas Supreme Court, Fifteenth Court of Appeals, and the Dallas District Court for their quick rulings ahead of the Fair,” a fair spokesperson wrote in a statement to KERA News. “We look forward to Opening Day and providing a safe environment for our millions of fairgoers, as well as our staff, vendors, and volunteers.”

A city of Dallas spokesperson said the city has no comment.

Texas law forbids government agencies from banning licensed handgun owners from government owned or leased property. The State Fair leases Fair Park from Dallas to host its annual event.

In his office’s petition to the Supreme Court, Paxton said in part the city was violating the law by allowing the Dallas Police Department to enforce the ban.

That argument didn’t persuade other courts to toss the ban. During a hearing in Dallas, defense attorneys successfully argued the officers were being paid by the fair — not the city — which means city officials didn’t have a role in enacting the ban.

The Texas Supreme Court came to a similar conclusion.

“Even accepting the State’s factual allegations as true—which we are not obliged to do at this stage—the allegations that the City controls the Fair amount only to scattered and indeterminate financial connections between the entities, not the kind of control that would make the State Fair’s decisions about guns imputable to the City,” the opinion reads.

Much like in the lower courts, Paxton’s own words were used against him in Blacklock’s opinion. Attorneys for the city and the fair pointed out that, in a 2016 opinion, Paxton released an opinion that found local governments are not liable when private businesses ban guns on government-owned property.

Paxton withdrew that opinion two weeks ago amid his push to have the fair’s ban overturned. But Paxton still hasn’t explained why the opinion was wrong, Blacklock wrote.

“It should go without saying—though perhaps it cannot be said often enough—that a judge’s role in this case is not to decide whether the State Fair made a wise decision,” the opinion reads. “Our job, instead, is to decide whether Texas law allowed the State Fair to make the decision for itself. The State declines to take a position on that essential question but nevertheless asks this Court for an injunction overriding the State Fair’s decision. It should also go without saying that our answer, for now, must be no.”