How Democrat Rochelle Garza plans to protect workers, LGBT Texans if she’s elected AG – Houston Chronicle

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It’s no surprise considering her background as a civil rights attorney, most recently for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, that she sees an opportunity for the office to hone in on issues of inequity for minority groups as well as worker’s protections.

Garza is running to unseat two-term Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Most recent polls have shown the margin between the two is slim, though she faces an uphill battle as no Democrat has won a statewide race in the state since 1994.

Kimberly Hubbard, a Paxton spokeswoman, said he is already successful at litigating civil rights cases with the office’s current setup.

“The attorney general’s office always has and will continue to defend the civil rights and liberties of Texans, with or without continuing to add an addition of a bloated, bureaucratic division,” Hubbard said. “Such suggestions are more about pandering to leftist activists — individuals who have never seen a government agency at any level they don’t want to expand.”

Nearly half of the nation’s state attorneys general offices have civil rights enforcement programs, according to research by the National Association of Attorneys General.

BACKGROUND: Texas AG Paxton’s $2.2M voter fraud unit closed three cases in 2021. GOP lawmakers still boosted its budget

Garza’s proposed Texas division would include several subdivisions, including LGBT rights, disability rights, voting rights and reproductive rights. Along the same lines, she also plans to open a worker’s protection bureau, a burgeoning concept in state attorneys general offices nationwide.

Eight states and Washington, D.C., have workers’ rights units within their AG offices. Of those, six were started in the last five years, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. The units have taken on cases that helped workers gain safer conditions at work during the pandemic, recover stolen wages and argue against being as independent contractors instead of employees — which often denies them benefits and increases their income tax burden.

Garza said she would work hand-in-hand with the Texas Workforce Commission, the state agency that investigates housing and employment discrimination complaints.

Her division would differ in focus; the commission handles individual cases, whereas her goal would be to identify “patterns and practices,” or in other words, systemic problems.

Texas historically has had weak LGBT protections in place, earning it the lowest score from the Human Rights Coalition, a political advocacy group, in a 2021 State Equality Index. The state has no anti-discrimination law on the books for sexual orientation or gender identity when it comes to employment, housing or public accommodations, though many cities have their own ordinances.

A federal judge earlier this month ruled that Texas employers can hire and fire employees based on LGBT-”related conduct,” such as the way a person dresses or the pronouns they use.

The group received broader protection after the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2020 ruled that gay and transgender people working for companies with at least 15 employees are covered by Title IX, a federal law that bans sex-based discrimination.

Still, as the state’s Republican majority takes a deeper interest in policies that curb LGBT rights, there remain many areas where a Democratic attorney general could file lawsuits or issue opinions to push back.

An opinion that Paxton penned in February, though legally nonbinding, spurred Gov. Greg Abbott to direct the state’s child welfare agency to initiate child abuse investigations of parents of transgender youth who allow them access to gender-affirming health care.

Paxton had argued puberty blockers and other treatments have the potential to physically or mentally harm a child and take away their right to reproduction. Most major professional medical organizations support evidence-based care for treatment of gender dysphoria.

“Attacking children is so un-Texan,” Garza said. “It’s bullying at its finest. I want to be clear about where I stand on this: Families should be able to make decisions that best fit their family.”

Johnathan Gooch, spokesman for Equality Texas, said organizations like his would welcome help from a state executive in fighting for equal rights for LGBT Texans.

“Simply having a group of lawyers who have expertise in human rights and civil rights would certainly reduce the number of frivolous harmful legal opinions coming out of the attorney general’s office,” Gooch said. “It would add an extra level of protection when other members of the executive branch take actions that violate Texans’ civil rights.”

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In 2021, the Legislature passed a law that requires student athletes to play on the sports team that matches their sex assigned at birth regardless of their gender identity. Next session, lawmakers are likely to debate a bill that’s passed in the Texas Senate before that would ban gender-affirming health care for children under 18. Texas Medicaid policy also excludes transgender-related health care.

The Supreme Court decision this summer overturning federal protections for abortion included language that indicated the court might be willing to revisit other decided cases, such as those that established the right to gay marriage and to contraception. Paxton indicated in TV interviews that he would support Texas passing laws that would prompt the high court to reconsider those rights.

“Roe was just the first — they won’t stop till they roll back all of our civil rights,” Garza tweeted in response to Paxton’s comment. “When I’m Attorney General, Texans will have a Civil Rights Division to protect ALL of our rights. Y’all means all. Period.”

Garza also plans to scrap Paxton’s top-priority election integrity unit, which she said has been used as a “means of suppressing the vote” and replace it with a voting rights subdivision. The subdivision would complement and bolster the work that advocacy groups are already doing in suing over restrictive laws and policies statewide, she said.

“My vision for a voting rights unit is to actually ensure people have access to voting,” she said. “Voting is one of our fundamental rights as citizens. It’s absolutely fundamental to our participation in this democracy. So it is critically important to protect that right.”

Libertarian Mark Ash agreed with Paxton in saying that a civil rights division would add unnecessary bulk in an office that he said needs to instead be downsized. Federal and state agencies already do adequate work in this area, he said.

A guard against ‘systemic violations’

Illinois has had a civil rights bureau since at least the ’70s, but it has grown substantially and expanded its jurisdiction in the last decade, its chief Amy Meek said.

The bureau consists of eight attorneys and three members of support staff that also handles disability rights and workers’ rights bureaus.

The office has litigated discrimination cases — such as against businesses with histories of discriminating against certain customers — as well as civil hate crime cases.

“It’s important because there are systemic violations, unfortunately, of people’s civil rights and constitutional rights,” Meek said. “Having a division or bureau dedicated to that can address systemic issues in a way that individual people bringing their own claims or lawsuits can’t always.”

Meek added that the bureau also issues guidance to state agencies and the public to help them understand their rights and responsibilities under state and federal civil rights laws.

It’s unclear what kind of restraints Texas Republicans in power might put on Garza, if she were to win.

In Iowa, for example, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2019 made an agreement with Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller that required him to seek her approval before joining multistate lawsuits, according to the Des Moines Register.

Reynolds, in exchange, vetoed a Republican-supported bill that would have barred him from joining any multistate suit other than ones the governor or lawmakers solicited.

taylor.goldenstein@chron.com