* Texas via the Guardian…

The defining experience of Jordan Zamora-Garcia’s high school career – a hands-on group project in civics class that spurred a new city ordinance in his Austin suburb – would now violate Texas law.

Since Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”, a little-noticed provision of that legislation has triggered a massive fallout for civics education across the state.

Tucked into page 8 is a stipulation outlawing all assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local officials – short-circuiting the training young Texans receive to participate in democracy itself.

Zamora-Garcia’s 2017 project to add student advisers to the city council, and others like it involving research and meetings with elected representatives, would stand in direct violation.

* DeSantis vs Disney continues…

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board announced Monday that it will counter-sue Disney after the company filed a lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Disney filed a lawsuit against DeSantis last Wednesday, alleging the Republican orchestrated a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” against the company that violates Disney’s free speech rights.

Disney is challenging the legality of a new board appointed by DeSantis to govern the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District – where the Walt Disney World resort is located.

“Disney sued us, we have no choice now but to respond,” Martin Garcia, chair of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, said Monday, according to Politico. “The district will seek justice in state court here in central Florida where both it and Disney reside and do business.”

* New York…

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is suing the state’s ethics watchdog alleging it doesn’t have the authority to seize $5.1 million from a book he wrote about the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Albany, argues that the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying In Government is not authorized to take money from his book “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” because the agency lacks the authority under state laws.

Cuomo’s lawyers wrote in the 46-page complaint that the move to create the new ethics commission last year “blatantly violates the separation of powers because it creates an unaccountable agency exercising quintessentially executive powers.”

“The act at issue here is a poster child for a statute that cuts at the heart of the structural protections inherent in the New York Constitution safeguarding the rights and liberties of the people,” Cuomo’s lawyers wrote. “To our knowledge, the act is unprecedented in that it creates a state entity with sweeping executive law-enforcement powers, including the authority to impose penalties, and yet utterly insulates the agency from any oversight by or accountability to the executive branch.”

* Montana…

Montana state legislator Zooey Zephyr is suing the state, House Speaker Matt Regier and Sergeant at Arms for the Montana House of Representatives Bradley Murfitt after being censured by House Republicans.

“The recent actions violate my 1st amendment rights, as well as the rights of my 11,000 constituents to representation,” Zephyr said in a tweet Monday. “Montana’s State House is the people’s House, not Speaker Regier’s, and I’m determined to defend the right of the people to have their voices heard.”

Zephyr is petitioning for her legislative privileges and duties to be reinstated. […]

Zephyr has since participated remotely in the legislature from the public seating of the state Capitol building.

* Missouri…

A Missouri judge on Monday temporarily blocked a first-of-its-kind rule that would restrict access to gender-affirming health care to children and adults, just hours before it was set to take effect.

St. Louis County Circuit Judge Ellen Ribaudo issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s emergency rule until a lawsuit challenging it is resolved.

In her ruling, Ribaudo wrote that those suing to block the ruling from taking effect “will be subjected to immediate and irreparable loss, damage or injury if the Attorney General is permitted to enforce the Emergency Rule, and its broad, sweeping provisions were implemented without further fact-finding or evidence.”

She wrote that patients “are at high risk of having their medical care interrupted for an unknown length of time; once the Rule goes into effect, they may lose access to medical care through their current providers until such time as the provider can come into compliance with the Rule’s requirements.”

More from KSDK…

The court’s decision was guided, in part, by concern that Bailey’s restrictions could have the effect of “creating confusion” in hospitals and clinics.

“The Rule promulgated by the Attorney General states specifically, ‘This rule does not contain an exhaustive list of the practices that violate the Act,’” the judge wrote in her ruling. “This leaves significant room for interpretation of what would and would not be covered by the Act, creating confusion for those tasked with the enforcement of the Rule and those required to comply.”

The rule would also require the patients’ doctors to sign off on documents stating the patients had no underlying mental health conditions. Transgender patients and medical advocates said the restrictions were written so broadly, they would amount to an effective outright ban on care.

* Oklahoma…

A year after banning nearly all abortion procedures in the state, Oklahoma lawmakers focused very little on the issue this legislative session.

Bills that would clarify exceptions and others seeking to toughen punishments have not advanced this session.

Gov. Kevin Stitt, who pledged to sign every anti-abortion bill that hit his desk, said during a campaign debate last year there should be exceptions for rape and incest. But lawmakers did not send the governor any bill carving out additional exceptions.

“It was a nonissue to the Legislature this year, which proves that it was always a political issue,” said Tamya Cox-Touré, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, which supports abortion rights.