Date Filed: October 29, 2025
Original Court: 467th District Court (Denton County)
Case Status: Pending
In 2023, the Texas Legislature heard complaints of a dramatic rise in certain cities imposing draconian regulations on Texans. Cities were regulating everything from selling used sporting goods to slamming car doors near a park. These normal activities fully complied with the law everywhere in the state—until a person crossed the invisible line of certain city limits.
Over the objection of these nanny-state city governments, the Texas Legislature passed the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act (TRCA). The TRCA sets state law as the exclusive regulation of certain subjects, not a floor upon which local governments can add additional regulations. This law prevents busybody cities from turning ordinary, law-abiding Texans into lawbreakers.
The City of Dallas hired taxpayer-funded lobbyists to fight this law, calling it the “Death Star Bill” as an attempt to stoke irrational fear surrounding the bill. Dallas also wrote a memo detailing the ordinances that would be impacted if the TRCA was passed. This heavily-researched memo contained more than 100 specific ordinances that would be blocked by the law. In the memo were ordinances that made it illegal to sell a baseball glove to a child or bounce a basketball in a park. Other ordinances require notifying the chief of police every time someone fixes a business printer and registering with the city if a restaurant allows dancing. There is no good reason for meddling laws like these.
Although the TRCA took effect in September 2023, it became clear that the City of Dallas no longer cared about its memo and its admission that hundreds of its ordinances were now illegal. Dallas continued enforcing the ordinances, now in defiance of state law.
Several Dallas residents remembered the memo and knew it represented a new hope to bring down Dallas’s unlawful ordinances once and for all. With help from CAF attorneys and joining with Associated Builders and Contractors of Texas, these Dallas residents sued the city to invalidate these preempted ordinances. CAF attorneys argue that Dallas has already admitted its ordinances are preempted by the TRCA and have no legal justification. Rather than repeal these ordinances, Dallas decided to fight and tighten its grip on its residents.
CAF attorneys now ask the court to enforce the TRCA and vindicate this small band of rebels struggling to restore freedom to their city.
Case Documents: