Texas
U.S. census and other surveys likely undercount the number of LGBTQ+ people living in Texas
Some queer Texans may fear disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity to neighbors or the government. The lack of accurate numbers makes it more difficult to provide appropriate health care, especially in rural areas.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
Gallup estimated that 5.6% of Americans identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in 2020. But according to the U.S. census from the same year, four Texas counties had no same-sex households and 93% had fewer than the national average.
Official surveys like the census undercount the size of the LGBTQ+ population, in part due to people’s fears of disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity to neighbors or the government, said Jack Jen Gieseking, a cultural geographer who studies gender and sexuality at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
“There are definitely always LGBTQ people everywhere, no matter what the state,” said Gieseking.
Undercounting the LGBTQ+ population makes it difficult for health care providers to deliver appropriate care, for service organizations to raise funds and for governments to allocate resources. These challenges are especially relevant in Texas, where a conservative culture makes people less likely to disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity on official surveys.
“One risk of undercounting is the assumption then that the population or the problem doesn’t exist,” said Brett Cooper, a specialist in adolescent medicine and member of the Texas Medical Association’s LGBTQ Health Section.
The U.S. census is severely limited in its ability to represent the LGBTQ+ population, according to Amy Spring, a demographer at Georgia State University. The survey asks only whether respondents live in same-sex households, and Spring said that this ignores gay and lesbian people who live in other arrangements and doesn’t address sexual and gender identity directly.
The American Community Survey, which is administered by the Census Bureau each year and is intended to provide more timely data than the decennial census, is also limited to asking about same-sex households. However, because this survey is given to only a sample of households, the picture it provides can be even fuzzier than the census. For example, between 2019 and 2021, the survey estimated that 75 Texas counties had no same-sex households, although estimates vary widely between years, especially for counties with small populations.
By contrast, a 2022 Gallup poll estimated that 7.1% of Americans identify as LGBT.
These limitations are exacerbated by LGBTQ+ people’s fear of disclosing their status, especially in rural and more conservative parts of Texas.
Amber Pérez, executive director of Borderland Rainbow Center, a LGBTQ community space in El Paso, said that she knows “quite a few” people who are afraid to disclose their sexual orientation and gender identity, especially in West Texas and other heavily Catholic areas along the border.
“Nobody really talks about it,” said Pérez. “And I think that people are concerned that if they mark specific things on the census or on surveys, they’re afraid it’s going to get back to people.”
While more urban parts of the state, such as Harris and Travis counties, show up in census data as having above-average rates of same-sex households, more rural areas, especially in West Texas and the Panhandle, show much lower rates.
“I am sure that you would not tell someone out where Lyndon Johnson grew up in the prairie that, yes, I’m gay, I’m a gay man living by myself,” said Gieseking.
As executive director of Texas Pride Impact Funds, Ron Guillard travels across the state to meet with LGBTQ+ service organizations. He said that LGBTQ+ people in many rural areas still hide their identities, even while the need for LGBT-specific services is clear.
“When you visit the small nonprofits that we fund in the Panhandle, it’s evident they serve large populations for counties and counties around them,” Guillard said. “Unfortunately, the Stonewall generation really just is largely living Don’t Ask, Don't Tell lifestyles, and they’re not engaged with the emerging needs of their communities.”
Demonstrating need
The undercounting of LGBTQ+ Texans can make it hard for the organizations that serve them to acquire funding and provide care.
According to Guillard, services for LGBTQ+ people are concentrated in the state’s urban centers and drop off rapidly in more rural areas.
Pérez said that her El Paso Borderland Center, which provides support groups and education and connects LGBTQ+ people with appropriate health care providers, serves people 300 miles away, some of whom are willing to drive in to receive treatment from a provider who understands their experience.
However, due to the challenges of counting LGBTQ+ people, Pérez said that illustrating the need for the services her center provides can be difficult.
In addition to undercounting, part of the problem is that sexual orientation and gender identity aren’t included in the census in the same way that categories such as race and gender are. For example, Pérez said that statistics such as income or food insecurity might describe the population of El Paso as a whole, but the experiences of her staff tell her that the situation for LGBTQ+ people can be much worse.
“We have numbers, but we don’t have great numbers,” said Pérez.
Amy L. Stone is a professor at Trinity University in San Antonio and co-director of Strengthening Colors of Pride, an organization studying LGBTQ+ health and resilience in San Antonio. They echo the challenges that insufficient data pose for organizations’ fundraising.
“You really need data,” Stone said. “If you’re going to write a grant, you can’t just say, well, I just know a lot of people who need this thing, right? You really need to say definitively, we need this resource.”
In order to address this need, in 2019, Strengthening Colors of Pride conducted a survey of LGBTQ+ people in the San Antonio area. The survey revealed the kind of statistics that Pérez said she needs, showing, for example, that LGBTQ+ people in the area have lower incomes and high rates of unemployment, are more likely to avoid seeing a medical professional, and report three times the national rate of family trauma and adverse childhood experiences.
Using the data produced by the survey, Stone said that Pride Center San Antonio was able to demonstrate the need for additional space to provide counseling and mental health care. Other organizations serving LGBTQ+ people in the area have been able to use the data in similar ways.
Providing care
Research shows that LGBTQ+ people in the United States face distinct health problems and have distinct challenges accessing care. They have higher rates of trauma, cancer, HIV and AIDS and are also more likely to have trouble finding a health care provider, to delay care or to not receive care at all.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is essential for health care providers to collect information about patients’ sexual orientation and gender identity in order to avoid health disparities and provide important services. However, the CDC also notes that many facilities lack the capabilities to collect this information.
Instead, many health care providers, especially those who are cisgender and heterosexual, are likely to assume that their patients are not LGBTQ+, said Gieseking.
Cooper gives the example of a pediatrician in a suburban area who claimed to have no LGBTQ+ patients. However, Cooper points out, looking at national data on trends related to LGBTQ+ youth, the pediatrician should assume that between 1% and 5% of his patients likely identify in that way.
“He’s just not asking,” said Cooper. “And so then he’s like, I don’t need to ask these questions. I don’t need to provide these services because if I have these supplies, I’m only going to use them on no one, so why would I pay for them?”
The lack of accurate data also impacts health research funding, said Cooper, who argues that government funds are more likely to go to areas that can demonstrate a greater impact. If an area in Texas appears to have few LGBTQ+ people on an official survey, that money is more likely to go to an area in another state where cultural factors make disclosing various sexual orientations or gender identities more likely.
“We need better ways of finding accurate counts of LGBTQ+ people in the country just to make sure that when we’re doing good policy, good funding allocations, we have accurate data,” said Cooper. “To be able to make sure that those dollars are spent in a prudent way and in a way that’s going to have the biggest impact versus just guessing.”
Stone said that the difficulty of obtaining appropriate health care in Texas is made worse by the prevalence of Catholic hospitals in the state and by the conservative state government’s tendency to rely on services from the nonprofit sector, where religious organizations are common.
Looking forward
While the decennial census and the American Community Survey ask respondents only if they live in a same-sex household, the Census Bureau’s American Pulse Survey began, in July 2021, to include questions on sexual orientation and gender identity. The survey, which was created to provide data on experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, revealed that LGBT respondents were more likely to feel anxious and depressed and to experience loss of job-related income.
The Census Bureau received $10 million in its 2023 budget for research related to adding questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to the American Community Survey. New survey questions must be approved by the Office of Management and Budget before they can be added to the American Community Survey.
The National Science and Technology Council also released, in January, a Federal Evidence Agenda of LBGTQI+ Equity, which highlights the lack of national data on the LGBTQ+ population and includes specific recommendations for improving data collection.
If questions about sexual orientation and gender identity were included on national surveys, Stone said, “it’d be mind-blowing because we actually would finally have a somewhat accurate count of how many LGBT people are in the U.S. We don’t even know that number. We’ve got no sense of what that number is.”
In the meantime, Stone said, organizations in Texas often must rely on imperfect data or conduct their own surveys.
“Without any data on your community, it’s really hard to say, ‘Yes, we absolutely need funding for this critical health care in our community,’” Stone said.
Daniel Carter is the co-director of Texas Community Health News.
Disclosure: Texas Medical Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Education
Texas colleges launch course reviews amid push to limit gender identity instruction
After a viral video stirred controversy at Texas A&M, Texas Tech ordered course adjustments while other university systems like UNT and UT launched reviews. It’s unclear what the reviews will look for.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
Last month, a viral video showing a Texas A&M University student confronting a professor over a discussion of gender identity during a children’s literature class sparked a firestorm in Texas higher education that has led other schools to review their academic offerings.
Texas A&M fired the professor in the video and former university President Mark A. Welsh III resigned. Seeking to preempt any similar controversy, the Texas Tech University System issued guidance last week instructing faculty to ensure that their courses comply with a federal executive order, a letter from Gov. Greg Abbott and a new state law that recognizes only two sexes.
Faculty and LGBTQ+ advocates fear the directive will limit classroom discussion of transgender and nonbinary identities. They warn the universities’ actions are the byproduct of political interference that threatens academic freedom and the quality of higher education in the state.
Brian Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said administrators should enable students to learn the widest set of topics by ensuring faculty can speak freely. He added that colleges and universities “have an obligation to develop campus policies that protect the Constitutional rights of their faculty to teach and research the subjects in their areas of expertise without intimidation or censorship.”
No law explicitly bars teaching topics like gender identity or the existence of more than two sexes. But Texas universities know their courses are under the microscope, with politicians and activists combing through catalogs and syllabi and demanding changes to any material they consider objectionable.
In the heels of Texas Tech’s guidance, at least three public university systems — the University of North Texas, the University of Texas and Texas Woman’s University — have ordered course reviews. They have framed the effort as ensuring compliance with state and federal law. But UT, UNT and TWU, unlike Texas Tech, did not specify which laws triggered the reviews. The systems did not say what actions their schools would take after the reviews.
Public universities are required to conduct curriculum reviews under Senate Bill 37, passed this year, but the first reviews aren’t due until 2027. The law directs governing boards to examine whether general education courses “are necessary to prepare students for civic and professional life” and “ensure a breadth of knowledge.” Earlier versions of the bill went much further, barring courses from promoting the superiority of any race, sex or religion, or from endorsing specific public policies or ideologies, but that language was cut before passage.
Here’s what public university systems and community colleges in the state have said so far:
Texas A&M University System
Chancellor Glenn Hegar announced on Sept. 9 a systemwide audit of course offerings, a day after Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, posted a secretly recorded video of the children’s literature class.
The clip went viral, and within days, professor Melissa McCoul was fired, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the head of the English Department were removed, and Welsh resigned under pressure from state leaders who said he had mishandled the controversy.
Hegar has not publicly detailed how the course review will be carried out or what criteria will be used.
Texas Tech University System
Chancellor Tedd Mitchell directed the presidents of the system’s five universities to review course materials, syllabi and curricula.
In a Sept. 25 letter, Mitchell told the university presidents to “make timely adjustments where needed” to comply with President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, Gov. Greg Abbott’s Jan. 30 letter and House Bill 229, all of which recognize only two sexes, male and female. None of them directly requires or mentions restrictions on teaching.
“While recognizing the First Amendment rights of employees in their personal capacity, faculty must comply with these laws in the instruction of students, within the course and scope of their employment,” Mitchell wrote.
The order offered no details on how the reviews would be conducted, leaving faculty uncertain about what changes might follow and drawing criticism from free speech and LGBTQ+ advocates who called it censorship and accused it of being cruel to trans and nonbinary students.
Mitchell’s directive came after Angelo State University, part of the Texas Tech System, told faculty they could not discuss transgender and nonbinary identities in their classes, making it the first known public Texas university to restrict classroom acknowledgment of such gender identities.
University of North Texas System
On Sept. 29, Chancellor Michael Williams directed each UNT System institution to conduct an expedited review of its academic courses and programs, including a complete syllabi review, to ensure compliance with “all current applicable state and federal laws, executive orders, and court orders.” Campuses have until Jan. 1 to finish the reviews.
Although Williams’ letter did not mention Trump’s executive order, Abbott’s letter or House Bill 229 like Mitchell’s directive did, a UNT system spokesperson told The Texas Tribune they will be considered in the course reviews. But when asked whether the system believes those measures prohibit schools from teaching that there are more than two sexes, or what the reviews will specifically look for, the spokesperson said only that those questions “will be discussed in the reviews.”
University of Texas System
A UT System spokesperson told the Tribune that the system is reviewing “gender identity” courses across all campuses “to ensure compliance and alignment with applicable law and state and federal guidance, and to make sure any courses that are taught on UT campuses are aligned with the direction and priorities of the Board of Regents.” The review will be discussed at the regents’ November meeting, the spokesperson said.
The UT System did not cite any specific measures that had triggered the reviews. The spokesperson did not say whether the system was interpreting and applying the president’s executive order, the governor’s letter or House Bill 229 in the same way as Texas Tech did.
The UT System also did not clarify what “reviewing gender identity courses” means in practice or whether it intends to prohibit or alter such classes.
University of Houston System
The system did not respond Tuesday to the Tribune’s request for comment.
Texas State University System
The system did not respond Tuesday to the Tribune’s request for comment.
Texas Woman’s University System
Texas Woman’s University System is “in the process of establishing a review of academic courses and programs, in accordance with all applicable state and federal laws,”a spokesperson said. The system, which is the state’s newest and smallest with campuses in Denton, Dallas and Houston, did not specify what the review will look for or whether it could result in changes to courses or programs.
Community colleges
In the Houston area, San Jacinto College “has made faculty and staff aware” of Trump’s executive order, Gov. Abbott’s letter and House Bill 229, according to Amanda Fenwick, a spokesperson for the college. Faculty have been instructed to do a review of course content, she said.
“San Jacinto College is committed to understanding and following federal and state laws and ensuring that all employees — including faculty — are compliant,” Fenwick wrote in a statement to the Tribune.
As part of the review, faculty have been ordered to ensure course content is aligned with student growth goals, which are in the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Academic Course Guide Manual and Workforce Education Course Manual, Fenwick said.
Texas has 50 community colleges. It is unclear if any other school is planning to review their courses. The Tribune also reached out to Alvin Community College and Blinn College, but they have not responded.
Sneha Dey contributed to this story.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
Disclosure: Texas Tech University System and University of North Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Education
Feds investigate another Texas school district for its gender identity mandate
Katy ISD’s board voted this past fall to require staff to notify parents if their child wants to use a different pronoun or identifies as a different gender.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation Monday into Katy Independent School District’s gender identity policy on the basis of gender harassment under Title IX. The investigation came nine months after the Houston Landing reported that the district adopted a policy that notifies parents if their child requests to use a different name or pronouns at school.
Katy ISD did not respond to a request of how many parents have been notified this year under the new policy, which requires staff to inform parents that students are transgender or ask to use different names or pronouns.
The Houston Chronicle reported in December that the district had notified parents at least 23 times since the policy was adopted.
The gender identity policy also bars schools from teaching “gender fluidity” and denies students from competing in sports with the gender they identify with, which mirrors state legislation already regulating K-12 athletics.
Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, a student-led advocacy group, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in November regarding the policy. Katy ISD graduate and member of SEAT Cameron Samuels labels the investigation as a win against the conservative policies being passed in the district.
“Elected solely on platforms to target marginalized students, far-right school board candidates accomplished exactly what they were elected to do: weaponize identity and neglect students’ educational needs,” they said.
Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational settings or federally funded activities. Gov. Greg Abbott has loudly voiced his opposition to the federal law recently ordering the Texas Education Agency to disregard the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX.
“The district is committed to offering equal educational opportunities to our entire community,” a spokesperson from Katy ISD told the Tribune in a response to the investigation. “While we have received the OCR filing and deny any wrongdoing, we are committed to remaining fully cooperative and responsive throughout the process.”
Victor Perez, Katy ISD board president and proponent of the policy, argued that the policy was “mischaracterized” by community members as an attack on its queer and transgender students and instead relieves the burden for staff withholding information from parents. The policy was passed at a board meeting in August with a vote of 4-3 after four hours of public comment.
Alastair Parker, a member of the Cinco Ranch High School Gender-Sexuality Alliance, spoke at the board meeting in opposition to the policy.
Parker and others argued that the policy infringes on the rights of transgender kids to express themselves and opens them to potential harm if they are outed to transphobic parents or caregivers.
Johnathan Gooch from Equality Texas, a nonprofit advocacy group for LGBTQ+ Texans, said he hopes students recognize their power to report policies like this in the wake of the increasing number of legislation targeting LGBTQ+ youth.
This isn’t the first instance in Texas of a gender related policy being investigated on the federal level. Carroll ISD in Tarrant County was reported to have eight open investigations last February after it eliminated protections over race, religion, gender and sexual orientation.
There are documented mental health benefits to using preferred pronouns. A research team at the University Texas at Austin conducted a study in which they concluded that students in gender-affirming environments report 71% fewer symptoms of severe depression, a 34% decrease in reported suicidal ideation and a 65% decrease in suicide attempts.
“When students place their trust in teachers and school administration, the school has a duty to preserve that trust,” Gooch said. “That duty requires schools to ensure that no disclosure would place a student in harm’s way.”
Parker has been out as a transgender man since the seventh grade and is supported by his father, who he resides with. He acknowledged that this isn’t the case for many of his classmates as some have parents that are less accepting.
His teachers have gone by his preferred name and pronouns for his entire high school experience. But since the policy has been enacted, he has seen some of his peers go by their deadnames fearing that their parents would be notified.
Over the past year, other schools across the state have adopted similar policies.
Keller ISD, which is also in Tarrant County, passed a policy in late June that prevents students from using their preferred name and pronouns or using restrooms with the gender they identify with.
The policy was met with retaliation from the Texas American Civil Liberties Union, writing in a letter to the district that the policy is “deeply invasive and unlawful for school administrators to interrogate students’ private medical information in this way.”
As the end of the school year nears, Parker observed the policy being enforced at varying levels of severity by teachers. The passing of legislation or policy like this deters from the ongoing health crisis for queer and transgender youth and is wholly unnecessary, he said.
“If a child’s not telling their parents something like that, it’s for a reason,” he said. “I know that most of the people who are in favor of this are the ones who bounce off whatever their parents have told them to repeat.”
Disclosure: Equality Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Amarillo
Appeals court considers whether West Texas A&M drag show was unconstitutionally banned
University President Walter Wendler canceled a drag performance last year, claiming such shows “denigrate and demean women.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
A federal appeals court considering whether West Texas A&M University’s president violated the First Amendment when he canceled a campus drag show last year focused many of their questions Monday on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld campus non-discrimination policies.
But the panel of three judges used that 2010 case — which said universities can require groups to admit LGBTQ+ students — to suggest that school officials could also ban drag shows because some people find the performances offensive to women.
A lawyer representing a group of West Texas A&M students who’ve twice attempted to host a drag show on campus argued before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday that President Walter Wendler discriminated based on viewpoint and censored speech when canceling the performances.
In March 2023, Wendler banned drag shows in response to a student fundraiser that featured drag performers. The president argued the performances “denigrate and demean women,” and shouldn’t be allowed on the public university’s campus.
In September, a federal judge said Wendler acted within his authority to cancel the drag show. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk wrote, at “this point in Free Speech jurisprudence, it is not clearly established that all ‘drag shows’ are categorically ‘expressive conduct.’”
Last month, students with WT Spectrum, the student group at the university, hoped to hold another drag show on campus — to show support for the LGBTQ+ community in a staunchly conservative corner of Texas.
With Wendler’s campus-wide ban still in place, the Supreme Court declined to intervene and the president again ordered the fundraiser from taking place.
The panel of judges hearing the appeal Monday were James Dennis, James Ho and Leslie Southwick.
Many of their questions centered around Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a case in which the Supreme Court upheld a policy of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, that bars student groups from excluding members based on status or beliefs.
In 2010, the Supreme Court affirmed that Hastings’ policy does not violate the First Amendment rights of CLS, a group of students that wanted to be officially recognized on campus while not allowing people who engage in “unrepentant homosexual conduct” from joining.
The 5th Circuit judges Monday seemed to suggest that Wendler’s ban was no different from the policy at the center of the 2010 Supreme Court case. One of the judges, who didn’t identify themselves before speaking, asked if plaintiffs intended to use the case in question to overturn CLS.
“Maybe we should overturn CLS?” one of three judges said. “Many people would like CLS overturned.”
Ho equated the policy upheld in CLS with Wendler’s drag ban. He said both intend to make everyone feel included, but the policies have the consequence of targeting one group. In CLS’ case, he said that Christians were singled out on Hastings’ campus for not allowing LGBTQ+ individuals to join. Ho said that previous groups on Hastings’ campus could exclude members, but CLS was singled out by the university’s non-discrimination policy.
JT Morris, senior attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression who represented the students, argued that the judges were comparing “apples to oranges” between the two cases.
Morris argued CLS is about a content-neutral policy, while Wendler was clearly discriminating based on viewpoint.
“The First Amendment does not allow the government to use the subjective term ‘offensive’ to restrict speech,” Morris said.
Joseph N. Mazzara, a lawyer with the Texas Attorney General’s Office who represented Wendler, said the students had not suffered any injury as a result of the no-drag policy because there was no future event featuring drag performers planned. Additionally, Mazzara said Wendler’s policy carried no criminal penalties and students could host drag performances off campus.
Mazzara said Wendler’s ban was not a free speech violation, but rather it was akin to banning certain conduct, like skateboarding on the grounds of a monument. He said drag shows constituted conduct, not speech.
“They’re able to do everything they want to do, they’re able to say all the speech they want to [say],” Mazzara said, referring to the student group WT Spectrum. “They just can’t do this one particular thing in this one particular place.”
A judge asked Mazzara how the university would have treated drag shows put on by other student groups, such as a fraternity. The judges seemed to agree with Mazzara that Wendler’s restriction did not target a specific viewpoint.
“If a Christian legal group wanted to have a ‘Drag for Jesus’ event that would also be banned,” Mazzara said.
One judge suggested that some drag shows are offensive to the transgender community, and thus Wendler’s ban would equally protect that population from offensive performances.
Allison Marie Collins, another lawyer from the Attorney General’s Office representing other defendants named in the lawsuit, argued the appellate judges should not impose any restrictions on Texas A&M system Chancellor John Sharp or West Texas A&M Vice President for Student Affairs Christopher Thomas. She argued an injunction against Sharp or Thomas would be overbroad, because it’s clear that only Wendler has acted to stop these shows.
“Neither Chancellor Sharp nor Dr. Thomas have remotely engaged in viewpoint discrimination, exclusion from a public forum or a prior restraint complaint to speech,” Collins said.
In his rebuttal, Morris argued the plaintiffs have standing over Sharp because he has the authority over Wendler to put an end to this restriction on free speech.
“He has the authority to do what’s best for the campus,” Morris said of Sharp. “He should have put an end to this prior restraint, which shouldn’t have lasted a day, and has now lasted a year.”
Disclosure: Texas A&M University and West Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
