Judge denies Campos' restraining order request against KRIS TV, city of Corpus Christi
A judge has rejected a temporary restraining order requested by a Corpus Christi councilwoman that would have forced a local broadcast station and the city to take down content on their sites related to a human resources investigation.
City Councilwoman Sylvia Campos earlier this month took legal action against KRIS TV and the city of Corpus Christi following publications of material about a medical incident she experienced on March 4 that became the subject of an employee grievance.
The situation, as described in a summary of the investigation from the city's human resources department, had made the employee feel uncomfortable and disrespected.
The summary shows that human resources recommended limiting how Campos interacts with city staff, saying Campos should meet with staff through videoconferencing when possible and that more than one staff member attend if a meeting is in person.
The Caller-Times is not describing Campos' medical issue in greater detail because of the sensitive nature of the topic.
Court documents filed by Campos' attorney, Matt Manning, describe Campos as experiencing 'a medical event of a highly sensitive, embarrassing nature for which she had previously sought and requested treatment' after a meeting with City Manager Peter Zanoni.
The broadcast story, and the statement subsequently posted by city officials responding to the KRIS TV story, disclosed 'private details of Petitioner's health information,' Manning asserts in records as part of an argument to grant the temporary restraining order.
In his April 8 denial of a temporary restraining order, County Court at Law 4 Judge Mark Woerner wrote that Campos had 'failed to meet the necessary burden to warrant injunctive relief.'
In addition to the temporary restraining order, Campos had also initially requested an injunction, as well as taking depositions.
While an injunction would likely not be sought or granted, there is work underway to request a hearing on a petition for taking depositions, Manning said April 16.
The petition, if granted, would allow Campos' representation to take depositions from station and municipal staff to explore potential claims against the city, KRIS TV or both.
While city officials and KRIS TV representatives declined comment on the denial of the temporary restraining order, court records shed light on their positions.
Among arguments that had been made in court filings against Campos' requests were First Amendment questions, as well as the length of time the material had already been within public view.
Although Campos had taken legal action as a private citizen, court filings against the temporary restraining order pointed out that Campos is generally thought to have less privacy because of her position as a councilwoman elected to her post.
Manning has contended in records that the KRIS 6 publication 'had no bearing on Ms. Campos' fitness to serve or a substantial nexus to the communication issue with City staff; and publication of such fact stood only to embarrass her.'
In an editorial posted April 3, KRIS TV senior director of local media content Jim Bob Breazeale wrote that what made it become a 'private matter into a newsworthy one was its impact on public resources, government operations, and proposed changes to how an elected official interacts with staff.'
After the station's story publication March 28, the city posted a statement on its site the same day that officials said was needed to clarify misinformation.
As part of the statement, it described the lodged complaint as 'behavior that is grossly inappropriate in a professional setting, even assuming that a medical incident explains what initially occurred in the conference room.'
Earlier this month, city officials told the Caller-Times that the city had been 'careful to avoid violating anyone's potential privacy rights,' and denied that the municipality had 'unduly injured a person's reputation.'
The response filed by the city, submitted by attorney Brian Miller on its behalf, described Campos' pleadings as 'unclear whether she asserts a defamation claim, an invasion-of-privacy claim, both, or neither.'
The incident couldn't be considered as a 'purely personal matter,' Miller added in the city's response, 'because City employees witnessed various parts of the incident.'
Miller noted that Campos had provided a statement for the KRIS TV story, as well as statements made in her court filings, which he asserted provided more medical information than the city's statement.
He added that by attaching the KRIS TV story and the city's response as part of the legal documents, 'Campos has ensured public availability of the complained-of story and statement,' and noted that Campos had 'not sought injunctive relief against the Corpus Christi Caller-Times despite the newspaper twice mentioning more about Campos' medical condition than the City's statement.'
In the KRIS 6 bench brief, attorneys with law firm Haynes & Boone LLP wrote that a temporary restraining order would have compelled 'KRIS to remove truthful reporting related to her interactions with the City Manager and his staff.'
The document states that although Campos 'asserts that information in the KRIS story (and the City's statement) is harmful to her reputation—alluding to a claim for defamation—her potential claim appears to be one for invasion of privacy,' but did not plead either.
Defamation claims fail 'because she has not alleged any statement made in the KRIS story is false—just that the statement in question is harmful, which she equates with being defamatory.'
'KRIS provided only the minimum amount of information about her medical condition,' KRIS TV's brief states, adding that the information was necessary to provide enough context for the story.
There's an issue, also, for restraint on the First Amendment, according to its brief, which would 'compel KRIS to change its website and social media to take down speech with which Petitioner disagrees.'
More: Corpus Christi rally attendees urge US Rep. Michael Cloud to attend town hall
More: Corpus Christi councilwoman's legal action shifts from federal to state courts
More: Corpus Christi councilwoman takes legal action against broadcast station, city
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Here's what may be next in legal action against Corpus Christi, KRIS TV
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Yahoo
Challenge to Florida stripper age law dropped
After a federal appeals court last month upheld similar restrictions in Jacksonville, plaintiffs have dropped a challenge to a Florida law that prevents strippers under age 21 from performing in adult-entertainment establishments. Attorneys for two clubs, a dancer and an adult retail store filed a notice Tuesday in federal court in Tallahassee dismissing the lawsuit, which challenged the law on First Amendment grounds. U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor issued an order Wednesday closing the case. The notice of dismissal did not explain the reasons, but attorneys for the plaintiffs filed a court document May 7 that pointed to a decision last month by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision upheld the constitutionality of a Jacksonville ordinance that bars dancers under age 21 in strip clubs. The May 7 document said the Jacksonville ordinance 'was very similar to the (state) statute challenged in this proceeding. In particular both laws prohibit the employment of persons under the age of 21 in exotic dance establishments.' It also said the plaintiffs in the Jacksonville case did not plan to seek a rehearing or to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. 'Accordingly, the decision issued by the Eleventh Circuit on April 23, 2025 is likely to be a final decision and precedential within this circuit,' the May 7 document said. Lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis last year overwhelmingly approved the age restriction, with supporters saying it was aimed at combatting human trafficking. The lawsuit was filed in July by operators of Cafe Risque, an establishment in Alachua County; operators of Sinsations, an establishment in Jacksonville; Serenity Michelle Bushey, a dancer who performed at Cafe Risque but was barred by the law from working there because she was under 21; and Exotic Fantasies, Inc., which operates a retail store in Jacksonville. The lawsuit said the Legislature did not 'consider any alternative forms of regulation which would burden First Amendment rights less severely; that is, the Legislature made no effort to solicit information in support of a more narrowly tailored law.' Also, it said the state had not shown a connection between human trafficking and adult-entertainment establishments. Winsor in December put the case on hold while the Atlanta-based appeals court considered the Jacksonville ordinance. In the May 7 filing, attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote that operators of Cafe Risque and Sinsations and Bushey 'are similarly situated to the litigants in (the Jacksonville case); to-wit: they are either performers or establishments utilizing performers to provide exotic dance entertainment.' But the document appeared to leave open the possibility that Exotic Fantasies, the retail store, could continue to challenge the law. 'Exotic Fantasies has alleged that the Legislature considered adverse secondary effects in connection with exotic dance clubs but did not consider any evidence linking adult retail stores to human trafficking or other adverse secondary effects,' the May 7 document said. 'Exotic Fantasies has also alleged that, as a matter of empirical fact, there is no basis to conclude that adult retail stores with no on-premises entertainment are linked in any way with human trafficking.' But the notice of dismissal Tuesday included all of the plaintiffs. It was filed 'without prejudice,' a legal term that leaves open the possibility that a challenge could be re-filed. Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
Bloomberg
21 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Will the Class of 2025 Ever Get Over College?
This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a US asset that generates tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value for Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major themes of the week past and how they will define the week ahead. Sign up for the daily newsletter here. 'Looking back over a decade,' wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, an indifferent student if there ever was one, 'one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks.' I'm wondering what image the class of 2025 will see in 2035 as they look back on their remarkably tumultuous undergraduate years. Will it be standing in defiance of administrators and politicians and police forces in a peaceful exercise of their First Amendment rights? Or standing in support of terrorists who murdered hundreds of people their age at a trance concert?
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
America will no longer tolerate Ireland's war on free speech
This week, Marco Rubio delivered a pointed warning to the world: the First Amendment is going global. The US secretary of state announced visa restrictions targeting 'foreign officials and persons' complicit in censoring Americans. 'Whether in Latin America, Europe, or elsewhere,' he said, 'the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.' Diplomatically, it falls just shy of sanctions. No names were named: everyone implicated in speech policing, from ministers to overzealous constables, must now wonder whether their family holiday to Disney World has just been indefinitely postponed. Nowhere is the unease more acute than in Dublin. Ireland has long enjoyed its status as the EU's Anglophone entrepôt, a low-tax haven with excellent manners. But with most major social media platforms headquartered there, Dublin's regulators have inherited the unenviable task of enforcing Brussels' online speech codes. Caught between Brussels and Washington, and economically tethered to both, Ireland finds itself in a tight spot. It can no longer please everyone. And the timing could hardly be worse. In February, Brussels enacted the Digital Services Act (DSA), the most ambitious speech regulations in its history. It requires platforms to remove 'illegal content,' including those now-ubiquitous modern offences: 'disinformation' and 'hate speech'. Both are defined, helpfully, by national authorities with varying sensibilities. Brussels has made clear it prefers those definitions to be broad, and enforcement to be swift. The European Commission has now given Dublin two months to resuscitate a shelved hate speech bill or face the European Court of Justice. The law, paused after public backlash, rests on the elastic premise that hate is whatever the state says it is. That may comfort the authorities, but it leaves tech platforms navigating a legal hall of mirrors. The result? American companies face a binary choice: enforce vague foreign speech codes, or risk fines of up to 6 per cent of global turnover per breach. Most will opt for the safer route: when in doubt, delete. The knock-on effects have not gone unnoticed across the Atlantic, and Washington is not amused. As it steps back from its old role as global policeman, it finds its companies quietly conscripted as global censors. The regime, for good measure, threatens to tax not just American profits, but the principles underpinning them. And thanks to a quirk of geography and corporate clustering, Ireland has become the bailiff. That role has already earned Dublin what diplomats might politely call a 'frank exchange of views'. This week, Trump dispatched a team to the Irish capital, where they met with free speech advocates and, I'm told, delivered a few sharp words to the Irish government and media commissioner. Rubio's initiative reflects a growing mood in Washington that American free speech norms are under threat abroad, and that the full force of US diplomacy may be needed to defend them. Europe, for its part, is still pretending there's no clash at all. In Brussels, social media is seen less as a marketplace of ideas than as a digital latrine – the source of Trump, Brexit, and other electoral embarrassments. The sluices, in their view, must be shut. Washington sees it rather differently. In one illustrative moment last year, Thierry Breton, then the EU's Internal Market Commissioner, publicly warned Elon Musk about 'amplifying harmful content' shortly before Musk interviewed Donald Trump. The optics were not ideal: a European official rebuking an American billionaire for speaking to a former American president, in the lead-up to an American election. No such warnings, needless to say, were issued to Democrats. To Trump's allies, the asymmetry is obvious, and the State Department appears to agree. Though 'billed to protect children from harmful online content,' Europe's laws are, in its words, 'used to silence dissident voices through Orwellian content moderation.' Orwellian is a word best used sparingly, but the DSA may be one of the rare exceptions. There is still no settled definition of disinformation or hate speech. European governments, many of them nervous about rising populism, are now positioned to define and punish speech just as their electorates become more volatile. That conflict of interest alone ought to raise eyebrows. Hints of what's to come are already visible. One of the DSA's guiding lights is the Global Disinformation Index. Its co-founder, Clare Melford, once explained that disinformation isn't always about accuracy: 'Something can be factually accurate but still extremely harmful.' This represents a small but meaningful innovation in liberal jurisprudence: the idea that truth is no defence. In a talk at the LSE, Ms Melford offered a 'more useful' standard: 'It's not saying something is or is not disinformation, but it is saying that content on this site or this particular article is content that is anti-immigrant, content that is anti-women, content that is antisemitic.' Put simply, disinformation is not what is false, but what the right people find distasteful. Whether Rubio's visa threats lead to tangible consequences remains to be seen. But the symbolism is already doing its work. If Europe's speech enforcers must now consider the possibility of being flagged or blacklisted from the US, then the First Amendment's long reach may be starting to make itself felt. If not yet in Brussels, then certainly in Dublin. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
