Baylor settles yearslong federal lawsuit in sexual assault scandal that rocked Baptist school

(AP) — Baylor University has settled a yearslong federal lawsuit brought by 15 women who alleged they were sexually assaulted at the nation’s biggest Baptist school, ending the largest case brought in a wide-ranging scandal that led to the ouster of the university president and its football coach, and tainted the school’s reputation.

Notification of the settlement was filed in online court records Monday. The lawsuit was first filed in June 2016.

The lawsuit was one of several that were filed that alleged staff and administrators ignored or stifled reports from women who said they were assaulted on or near campus.

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Among the early claims from some women in the lawsuit was that school officials sometimes used the campus conduct code that banned alcohol, drugs and premarital sex to pressure women not to report being attacked. Another previously settled lawsuit alleged Baylor fostered a “hunting ground for sexual predators.”

The terms of the settlement announced Monday were not disclosed.

“We are deeply sorry for anyone connected with the Baylor community who has been harmed by sexual violence. While we can never erase the reprehensible acts of the past, we pray that this agreement will allow these 15 survivors to move forward in a supportive manner,” Baylor University said in a statement.

The scandal erupted in 2015 and 2016 with assault allegations made against football players. The school hired Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton to investigate how it handled those assaults and others.

The law firm’s report determined that under the leadership of school President Ken Starr, Baylor did little to respond to accusations of sexual assault involving football players over several years. It also raised broader questions of how the school responded to sexual assault claims across campus.

Starr, the former prosecutor who led the investigation of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, was removed as president and later left the university. Starr died in 2022.

Also fired was football coach Art Briles, who denied he covered up sexual violence in his program. Briles had led the program to a Big 12 conference championship, but he has not returned to major-college coaching.

Baylor officials have said the school has made sweeping changes to how it addresses sexual assault claims and victims in response to the Pepper Hamilton report. That report has never been fully released publicly, despite efforts by the women suing the school to force it into the open.

Chad Dunn, an attorney for the women who settled Monday, said the lawsuit and scandal went far beyond the problems in the football program that captured early attention.

“Their bravery and strength has created legal precedents that empower others to gain relief from the injuries inflicted by their universities, while also securing safer education environments for future generations,” Dunn said.

“Baylor’s focus of media attention on football tried to misdirect attention from institutional failures of the Baylor administration. Our clients would have none of that,” Dunn said. “Their determination brought the focus on officials in the ivory tower and ‘the Baylor way.’ ”

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By JIM VERTUNO Associated Press

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Kansas will no longer change trans people’s birth certificates to reflect their gender identities

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas will no longer change transgender people’s birth certificates to reflect their gender identities, the state health department said Friday, citing a new law that prevents the state from legally recognizing those identities.

The decision from the state Department of Health and Environment makes Kansas one of a handful of states that won’t change transgender people’s birth certificates. It already was among the few states that don’t change the gender marker on transgender people’s driver’s licenses.

Those decisions reverse policies that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration set when she took office in 2019. They came in response to court filings by conservative Republican state Attorney General Kris Kobach to enforce the new state law. Enacted by the GOP-controlled Legislature over Kelly’s veto, it took effect July 1 and defines male and female based only on the sex assigned to a person at birth.

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Jaelynn Abegg, a 38-year-old Wichita resident, said her heart breaks for fellow transgender Kansas residents who won’t be able to experience the joy she felt when her new birth certificate, affirming her female identity, arrived in the mail in 2021. She said the change gave her “a feeling completeness.”

“This is something that I’ve been grappling with my entire life. As far back as I can remember, I have wished that I was that I was a woman,” Abegg said. “And being able to embrace that and take that for myself has been has been life changing.”

Trangender Kansas residents also have said repeatedly in interviews that having ID documents that conflict with their identities makes traveling by airplane, interacting with police and even using a credit card in stores more complicated. Also, studies show that transgender people who don’t have their identities affirmed, especially youth, generally are more prone to depression and at a higher risk of suicide.

Kobach publicly chastised Kelly when she initially said that her administration could continue to change transgender people’s birth certificates and driver’s licenses despite the new law. He said it was her duty to administer the law even though she opposes it.

Kelly said in a statement Friday: “As I’ve said before, the state should not discriminate or encroach into Kansans’ personal lives -– it’s wrong, it’s bad for business.”

She added: “However, I am committed to following the law.”

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for Lambda Legal, which represents LGBTQ+ people in lawsuits, said Kelly’s administration was forced to act as it did, though he expects the courts to find the law unconstitutional.

“People with a myopic view or a misunderstanding or misapprehension about trans people want to ensure that trans people are not seen by government and the world at large,” he said.

Kobach and other supporters of the new law have argued that a birth certificate is a record of a historical event and therefore shouldn’t change even when a person’s gender identity does. Also, some supporters of the law have acknowledged that they don’t see transgender girls and women as girls and women.

Kobach said Friday he is pleased that Kelly’s administration is complying with the new law, adding in a statement, “The intent of Kansas legislators was clear.”

The new Kansas law was based on a proposal from several national anti-trans groups and part of a wave of measures rolling back transgender rights in Republican-controlled statehouses across the U.S. Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee also don’t allow transgender residents to change their birth certificates, and Montana and Tennessee don’t allow driver’s licenses changes.

From 2019 through June 2023, more than 900 Kansas residents changed the gender markers on their birth certificates and nearly 400 changed their driver’s licenses. Both documents list a person’s “sex.”

Kobach issued a legal opinion in late June saying that not only does the new law prevent such changes, it requires the state to reverse previous changes to its records. The Department of Health and Environment said Friday a transgender person can keep a changed birth certificate and it remains valid, but if another copy is issued in the future, it will revert to listing the sex assigned at birth.

For weeks before the new law took effect,LGBTQ-rights advocates urged trans people to change their driver’s licenses and birth certificates before it took effect. Requests for changes surged in the weeks before the law took effect.

Under the conservative Republicans who were governor before Kelly, transgender residents also couldn’t change their birth certificates.

Four trangender residents represented by Lambda Legal sued the state in 2018 over that policy, and months after taking office, Kelly settled that lawsuit. A federal judge signed off on a settlement agreement requiring the state to change transgender people’s birth certificates.

In late June, Kobach filed a request with the same federal judge, asking him to lift the requirement because it conflicted with the new state law. The judge granted the request last month, saying he was leaving it to Kansas courts to determine how the law must be enforced.

Kobach also filed a separate state-court lawsuit in July to prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses. A state district court judge ordered that such changes cease, at least through early January.

In that state-court case, five transgender people argue that the new law violates their rights under the Kansas Constitution.

That issue appears likely to go to the Kansas Supreme Court, which ruled in 2019 that the state’s Bill of Rights grants people a right to bodily autonomy.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas has set up a website for people to report that they’ve been harmed by the new state law rolling back trans rights.

“Accurate, affirming identity documents are crucial for the health, safety, and well-being of trans people,” said D.C. Heigert, LGBTQ+ legal fellow for the group.

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By JOHN HANNA and HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH Associated Press

Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.

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DC Circuit rounds out trio of hearings on emission standards

WASHINGTON (CN) — A D.C. Circuit panel heard from a group of conservative states and business groups Friday as they argued against a caveat that allows California to restrict fuel emissions beyond the federal government’s rules. it was the third hearing at the appellate court this week centered on emissions standards.

The exception, known as the California Waiver, was enacted in the 1970s so the state could address smog over Los Angeles. It has since evolved to make the state a “laboratory of innovation” where automakers can test new technology. 

The states argued the exception for the largest car market in the country is effectively pushing the car industry to adopt electric vehicles faster than they otherwise would have, if California’s standards matched those set by the federal government. 

Friday’s arguments before U.S. Circuit Judges J. Michelle Childs, Bradley Garcia and Robert Wilkins follow a pair of similar cases argued before another panel of judges on Thursday, targeting emission standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

The challengers in one case, 15 conservative states and industry groups, found a surprising ally in the other suit’s plaintiff, the National Resources Defense Council, which also argued that the standards were a veiled attempt to phase out traditional liquid-fuel vehicles in favor of their electric counterparts. 

Car manufacturing companies sided with the federal government in all three of the cases. 

On Friday attorney Jeffrey Wall, of Sullivan & Cromwell, represented the intervening the Valero Renewable Fuels Company. He brought up the so-called “major questions doctrine” — as he did Thursday morning over the EPA rule — saying California’s role as both a testing ground and the leading consumer of cars gives the state power over the rest of the nation. 

The three-judge panel seemed less receptive to the major questions argument compared with Thursday’s panel — Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan and U.S. Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Florence Pan — and spent little time on the topic. 

In September 2022, the state’s powerful Air Resources Board passed a new set of regulations that essentially require all vehicles sold in the state to be either electric, hydrogen-fueled or at least plug-in hybrid by 2035. Soon after, 17 states adopted similar rules, showing the influential role the state has. 

Ohio led the challenge, along with Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Wall argued that by maintaining the California Waiver, the EPA has given the state a regulatory power unequal to the rest of the states and even comparable with the federal government. In his view that’s particularly problematic if, apart from its smog, California faces the same climate change issues as the rest of the country.

The Trump administration revoked the exception in 2019 as part of its wide-reaching rollback of efforts to fight climate change. Then-EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the rule worked against the idea of federalism by allowing a single state dictate standards for the nation.

President Joe Biden reinstated the rule in March 2022.

Eric Hostetler, a Justice Department attorney representing the EPA, argued that the rule has nothing to do with federalism, rather it enhances the state’s authority, and likened it to Texas’s power to maintain its own electrical grid. 

“The states’ theory would undermine that exception,” Hostetler said. 

Judge Garcia, a Biden appointee, noted that states like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas each have special authority over their coastal seabed in the Gulf of Mexico, a form of enhanced sovereignty that other states do not.

When other states brought the Supreme Court challenge United States v. Louisiana, the justices denied the challenge and affirmed the coastal state’s sovereignty.

Judge Wilkins, a Barack Obama appointee, seemed to be the most receptive to the idea that the exception gave California unnecessary special rights, using an analogy to characterize the state’s stricter emission limits to soldiers.

He said if a state needs protection, it really only needs as many soldiers as any other state, “that doesn’t mean they need to have a million more soldiers.” 

Chloe Kolman, another Justice Department attorney for the EPA, pointed out that car manufacturers make their plans years in advance and many base their decisions off California’s standards. 

If the exception were overturned, it could be extremely disruptive for the auto industry, which saw 12,700 United Auto Workers begin striking Thursday night in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri for better wages and working conditions. The industry generated approximately $2.86 trillion in 2021 and employs over 1.7 million people. 

from Courthouse News

At DC Circuit, red states argue federal emission rules will force nation to adopt electric vehicles

WASHINGTON (CN) — A D.C. Circuit panel heard arguments on Thursday over dual challenges to a recent set of federal rules meant to limit the greenhouse gas emissions of “light-duty” motor vehicles — cars, vans, SUVs and pickup trucks — that critics say effectively mandates an extreme transition to electric vehicles. 

Arguments centered on a 2021 Environmental Protection Agency rule that would cut down on pollution from automobile tailpipes, one of the largest sources of planet-warming emissions, and similar emission standards set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for cars built from 2024 through 2026. 

Transportation accounts for approximately 28% of the United States’ total greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2021 EPA study. Light-duty trucks, which include SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans, account for most emissions within that group at 37%, followed by medium- and heavy-duty trucks at 23% and passenger cars making up 21% of transportation emissions.

First in the pair of cases combined for arguments on Thursday was a challenge brought by 15 conservative-leaning states and industry groups who say Congress, not the EPA, should sign off on limits that would so significantly shift American life they exceed the federal agency’s authority.

The argument hinges on the “major questions doctrine,” which has come before the Supreme Court in recent years. The high court used the principle, which is a matter of statutory interpretation rather than a written law, to block President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program earlier this summer.  

That made-up doctrine became the focus of the three-judge panel for much of the first set of oral arguments Thursday, as the judges attempted to define clear boundaries as to the extent of the environmental agency’s authority.

Taking the place of Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is in the midst of an impeachment trial, Texas Principal Deputy Solicitor General Lanora Pettit argued EPA set emission standards so stringent that meeting the limits mandates a transition toward electric vehicles.

Jeffrey Wall, of Sullivan & Cromwell, who represents the intervening Renewable Fuels Company, joined Pettit. The two attorneys repeatedly pointed to a section of the EPA rule that they argued revealed the agency’s aim to completely phase out traditional, combustion-engine vehicles. 

“Compliance with the final standards will necessitate greater implementation and pace of technology penetration through 2026 using existing [greenhouse gas] reduction technologies, including further deployment,” of electronic vehicles, the rule states. 

All three judges, including the Trump-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas, expressed some doubt as to whether that language or other similar sections indeed show the government intended to set a standard with which only electric vehicles could possibly comply.

U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, pointed out that the EPA estimated the standard would only increase electric vehicle use from about 7% to 17% by 2026 — a shift hardly large enough to bring the major questions doctrine into the picture. 

Sue Chen, an environmental attorney for the Department of Justice, argued the standard was by no means a mandate that Americans fully forgo their old cars, but is meant to encourage that process in order to meet the nation’s climate goals. 

Joining the suit were the states of Texas, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. Arizona was originally part of the group, while Republican former Attorney General Mark Brnovich was in office, but his Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, pulled out when she took the office. 

Thursday’s second case centered on a similar standard set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Natural Resources Defense Council argued the rule wrongly relies on California’s state emission standards and thus failed to calculate the “maximum feasible average fuel economy standards” based on the current fleet of vehicles on the market today.

Pete Huffman, a staff attorney for the organization, said the rule should not have excluded efficient combustion engine technologies, like so-called high-compression-ratio or “Atkinson-enabled” engines, which can also reduce emissions.

He pointed to the Atkinson engines — which use shorter piston strokes to save on fuel — as a way the agency could have set the standard without focusing solely on electric vehicles.

A third case on Friday will address California’s long-standing authority to set higher emission standards than the federal government’s.

Scott Hochberg, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the intervenors in Friday’s case, said the three challenges pose a considerable threat to climate efforts.

“We can’t gut clean car standards that have been game changers for consumers, public health, the climate and clean air,” Hochberg said in a statement Wednesday. “I hope the court rejects these short-sighted attempts to weaken and undo fundamental laws that protect us all. Because automakers have time and time again refused to use proven technologies to reduce pollution, we need strong clean car standards to lead the way.”

The final judge on Thursday’s panel was Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan, a Barack Obama appointee.

from Courthouse News

First Circuit weighs school policy affirming students’ gender identity against parents’ right to know

BOSTON (CN) — In a nationally watched test case in which 34 states filed amicus briefs, the First Circuit heard arguments Wednesday on whether a school violated parents’ constitutional rights when it actively encouraged their 11-year-old daughter to change her gender while hiding this fact from them.

Parents have no right to know about or interfere with a child’s gender transition because “gender identity is an immutable characteristic” and “you can’t decide to have transgender children or not to have transgender children,” the school’s lawyer, David Lawless of Robinson Donovan in Springfield, Mass., told the court.

If schools had to disclose a child’s gender, there would be “no limiting principle” because “schools have lots of important information about students all the time. You can’t pick and choose what to disclose,” Lawless said.

“I don’t see that,” responded U.S. Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman. “Gender identity is very important to everyone. Are you really saying that there’s no difference between gender identity and who a child played with at recess?”

Lawless stood his ground and said that a school has no duty to tell parents a wide variety of important information about students, including whether they are depressed or suicidal or were raped or had an abortion.

“You seem to be asserting that the right of students to make decisions trumps the right of parents to know what’s going on,” said U.S. Circuit Judge Kermit Lipez, a Clinton appointee.

“We are,” Lawless answered.

The case, Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, arose when Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri’s daughter, known in court papers as B.F., expressed interest in becoming a boy. The parents wrote to her teachers and principal as well as the superintendent and school committee members in their town of Ludlow, Mass., saying that they would handle her mental health issues and asking them not to have any private conversations with B.F. about it.

But that’s not what happened. Pursuant to a school board policy, school officials regularly met privately with B.F.; actively affirmed the child’s gender transition; allowed B.F. to use the boys’ bathroom; instructed everyone at the school to use the child’s preferred name and pronouns; and implied to B.F. that Foote and Silvestri weren’t providing a safe environment at home. Officials hid all this from Foote and Silvestri.

When a teacher later bucked the policy and told the parents anyway, she was fired. The superintendent publicly accused families who objected to the policy of “intolerance, prejudice and bigotry … thinly veiled behind a camouflage of what is being asserted as ‘parental rights.’”

Foote and Silvestri sued, claiming the school violated their substantive due process right to direct their child’s upbringing and to make mental health decisions.

In December 2022, a trial judge ruled in favor of the school, finding that while its policy was “flawed” and “disconcerting” and “students and parents would almost certainly be better served” by a different approach, its actions didn’t violate the Constitution.

Simply calling students by their preferred name and pronouns didn’t amount to mental health treatment, the judge said. And while parents have a right to direct their children’s upbringing, interference with that right doesn’t violate due process unless it “shocks the conscience” — and given the newness of the transgender issue and the public controversy surrounding it, the school’s choices didn’t rise to that level.

As an example of something that “shocks the conscience,” the court cited a case where a school lied about whether its drinking water was safe.

But the parents’ lawyer, Mary McAlister of the Child & Parental Rights Campaign in Johns Creek, Georgia, told the First Circuit that this case was analogous to one in which a federal judge in Maine found that it shocked the conscience when a police officer tried to get an 11-year-old girl to snitch on her parents for marijuana use and implied that she wasn’t safe at home.

In B.F.’s case, McAlister said, “an 11-year-old girl was being told that her parents don’t love her, they can’t keep her safe, she can’t trust them and she can only trust the school.”

McAlister also argued that the “shocks the conscience” test is easier to meet in the case of a deliberate policy decision as opposed to a spur-of-the-moment choice by law enforcement.

Lawless responded that much of what the school did, such as letting the child use preferred pronouns and bathrooms, was required by a state educational guideline. But “that’s a guideline, not a law or legal decision,” McAlister said. “You need to look at what other courts have done.”

McAlister faced tougher questioning on whether the school was providing mental health treatment. U.S. Circuit Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, an Obama appointee, noted that the child was never diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

“Wouldn’t accepting this argument mean that many ordinary people in everyday life are providing mental health treatment when they use preferred pronouns?” asked Rikelman.

McAlister responded that using preferred pronouns and other “social transitioning” is a standard part of mental health protocols; the school behaved as though the child had gender dysphoria; and the situation was different from “everyday life” because the school was acting with governmental authority.

Rikelman is a Biden appointee who joined the court in June after representing the abortion clinic in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v. Wade. Interestingly, in that case she argued that abortion should be considered a substantive due process right.

Even if the parents in this case can persuade the court that the school’s conduct shocks the conscience, the individual defendants might still have qualified immunity if the right they violated wasn’t clearly established at the time.

“Plaintiffs have not identified a single case that establishes a substantive due process right that has been violated,” Lawless insisted.

“Do you need to find a case squarely on point?” Rikelman asked. “Isn’t applying the law to new facts what advocates do all the time?”

“Yes, but there’s nothing that comes close to the rights asserted in this case,” Lawless replied, adding that “just because you might have a flawed policy doesn’t mean the policy shocks the conscience.”

The case drew briefs from more than 100 amici, including 19 states that support the parents (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia) and 15 states that support the school (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state, plus the District of Columbia).

Ludlow is an unlikely epicenter for a national transgender controversy. The sleepy middle-class suburb of Springfield, once a mill town, has 21,000 people and narrowly voted in favor of President Trump in 2020.

from Courthouse News

New lawsuit in Idaho questions scope of state abortion exemptions

(CN) — A new lawsuit over Idaho’s strict abortion bans filed Monday seeks clarifications on the state’s recent exceptions to the bans that went into effect on July 1.

The abortion bans cited by the lawsuit primarily involve Idaho’s “trigger ban” or “total abortion ban,” which was passed in 2020 and went into effect in August 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The law initially prohibited abortion at all pregnancy stages while threatening felony criminal sentences of two to five years in state prison.

Another Idaho law not only prohibits abortions after six weeks but allows the family of a fetus or embryo to sue an abortion provider for at least $20,000 while imposing felony penalties and threatens revocation of a doctor’s medical license. Meanwhile, Idaho’s “abortion trafficking law” went into effect in May 2023, making it illegal for adults to assist minors in obtaining legal abortions out of state without the consent of their parents or legal guardians.

The bans have caused doctors to flee the state, fearing prosecution.

“Since Roe was overturned, obstetrician-gynecologists and maternal fetal medicine specialists are resigning and leaving Idaho in droves,” the plaintiffs — four women, two doctors and the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians — say in the complaint, explaining that since Idaho’s trigger ban went into effect, four out of Idaho’s nine fetal medicine specialists have left the state while one other plans to retire this year.

That’s in addition to two rural hospitals that have closed their labor and delivery centers — one of which attributed its closure to physician resignations in response to the laws — and struggles within the state’s major hospitals to hire and retain doctors, according to the complaint.

“Prominent physicians are warning that Idaho’s abortion bans are creating an extensive healthcare desert where both maternal and infant mortality rates will spike,” the plaintiffs say, later adding the Idaho Legislature is covering up the measurable effects of its ban by ending its Maternal Mortality Review Committee — established by lawmakers to review and share data concerning pregnancy mortalities and provide remedies.

Amid tension over the fallout of the bans, the Idaho Legislature recently amended its total abortion ban to exclude instances of ectopic and molar pregnancies and situations in which abortions are necessary to save a mother’s life or prevent a pregnancy caused by reported rape or incest in the first trimester.

The four individual plaintiffs, who could not access medical abortions in Idaho, and the others seek clarity on the scope of the state’s exceptions that went into effect on July 1.

They say it is unclear whether the exceptions protect Idahoans like its patient plaintiffs, “for whom pregnancy poses serious threats” to their health, safety and families.

On Tuesday, Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, issued a statement on how the demise of Roe v. Wade has led to several multi-state abortion bans that affect women when facing serious complications in their pregnancies.

“No one should have to be at death’s door to receive essential health care, but that is exactly what happens when doctors are forced to practice medicine under threat of imprisonment,” Northup said.

The abortion rights advocacy group — which is representing the plaintiffs in addition to attorneys from Nevin, Benjamin and McKay LLP — also helped launch two similar actions in Tennessee and Oklahoma on Monday, claiming the states’ abortion bans prevent women with complicated pregnancies from receiving life-saving care. The lawsuit in Tennessee in particular is more reminiscent of the Idaho lawsuit, as it questions the limited scope of the state ban’s “emergent medical condition” exception.

Together, Monday’s lawsuits follow a series of other actions filed in the last year challenging laws that govern abortion care throughout the U.S., including Arizona, Missouri, Florida, North Carolina and Texas.

from Courthouse News

Texas heat brings the state’s power grid closest it has been to outages since 2021 winter storm

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas’ power grid manager on Thursday again asked residents to cut their electricity use as the state endures another stretch of sizzling summer heat. The request carried fresh urgency, coming the day after the system was pushed to the brink of outages for the first time since a deadly winter blackout in 2021.

The request by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which serves most of the state’s 30 million residents, came a day after low energy reserves prompted the grid operator to issue a level 2 energy emergency alert. Operating reserves fell as demand surged amid the heat, and power from wind and solar energy sources proved insufficient, according to ERCOT.

It was the first time the council entered emergency operations since a deadly 2021 ice storm knocked out power to millions of customers for days and resulted in hundreds of deaths.

The emergency status remained in place for about an hour Wednesday night until grid conditions returned to normal, ERCOT said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

On Thursday, ERCOT asked residents to conserve power from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. CDT as reserves were again expected to be low. Much of Texas was covered by heat advisories on Thursday, with high temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) in Austin, Amarillo, Dallas and El Paso.

“We request Texas businesses & residents conserve electricity use, if safe to do so,” ERCOT said in a tweet.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said improvements since 2021 have stabilized the grid. Earlier this year, Texas lawmakers passed bills aimed at luring developers to generate more “on-demand” electricity, but the legislation did not extend to renewable sources.

Many Texans remain skeptical of the grid’s reliability.

In June, just before this summer’s heat settled into Texas, Abbott vetoed a bill to strengthen energy efficiency in new construction, saying it wasn’t as important as cutting property taxes.

Texas is not connected to the rest of the country’s power grid, unlike other U.S. states, leaving few options to pull power from elsewhere amid shortages or failures.

In May, regulators warned that demand may outpace supply on the hottest days.

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By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press

from Courthouse News