Free Speech in Texas
Steve Taylor
EDINBURG — Mission Mayor Norberto “Beto” Salinas will no longer get thousands of dollars in damages from Mission community activist Ester Salinas.
The 13th Court of Appeals has acknowledged it “erred” when it ruled in the famous Salinas v. Salinas slander case. In an opinion issued Sept. 13, the 13th Court reversed its decision to uphold a trial court’s award of $30,000 in damages to Mayor Salinas. The 13th Court’s U-turn came after the South Texas Civil Rights Project, representing Ester Salinas, won its appeal to the Supreme Court of Texas.
(File photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)
Ester Salinas has thanked
the South Texas Civil Rights Project
for its help in the Salinas v. Salinas
court case.
Reversing the 13th Court’s original ruling, Justice Dori Contreras Garza wrote in the Sept. 13 ruling: “Neither the 2005 city council statement nor the ‘drug dealer’ statement were valid grounds upon which the $30,000 mental anguish damages award could have been based. Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court awarding such damages is reversed, and we render judgment that Norberto take nothing by way of his claims against Ester.”
Salinas v. Salinas originated when Mayor Salinas brought a lawsuit against Ester Salinas in 2005, claiming she defamed him at two rowdy town hall meetings in Mission. Mayor Salinas also sued Ester Salinas for comments she made to a Telemundo reporter that were aired on TV. She said that based on a conversation she had with then-La Joya Mayor Billy Leo, she believed her life was under threat.
Mayor Salinas won his defamation case in the 206th District Court and also partially won when Ester Salinas and the South Texas Civil Rights Project appealed in 2009 to the 13th Court of Appeals. However, Mayor Salinas lost in a ruling handed down by the Texas Supreme Court in June.
The latest ruling by the 13th Court gives a detailed recap of the case. It points out that Ester Salinas conducted years of research into the impact the highly toxic Hayes-Sammons pesticide plant had on workers at the plant and Mission residents living near the Superfund facility. “Ester discovered that Mission residents were suffering ‘abnormal’ health problems which she believed were caused by chemicals emanating from the Hayes-Sammons plant,” Judge Contreras Garza wrote.
“Ester believed that city officials, including Norberto, were negligent in failing to notify the affected residents that their land was contaminated and in failing to arrange for the residents to be relocated from the contaminated area.”
Naturally enough, Ester Salinas and Norberto Salinas had very different takes on the latest court ruling.
“I’m so thankful we won,” Ester Salinas told the Guardian. “I believe in freedom of speech and I had a right to be extremely vocal and concerned about the health care of the families living in the Superfund area. The long term effect of living next to a highly toxic Superfund site was being covered up.”
Ester Salinas said she never wanted to get into a fight with the Mission city administration. “I was looking to our elected officials to speak up for the people, to be heroes. Instead, they helped hide the truth from us and they tried to shut us up,” she said.
Ester Salinas paid tribute to her legal team. “I would like to publicly thank Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, David Hall, James Harrington, Abner Burnett, Corinna Spencer-Scheurich, Peter Kennedy, and all the staff at the South Texas Civil Rights Project. They worked so hard. They were unwavering in their support. They never gave up. They believed in our cause,” she said.
TCRP would also like to extend a special note of appreciation for the assistance of Pete Kennedy of Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody.
Ester Salinas also offered advice to the community leaders coming through behind her. “My advice to the citizens of Mission if they have an issue with the moneyed interests is to speak out. Never be afraid to speak out. After all, we live in the United States of America, the land of free speech.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Mayor Salinas said he had not seen the latest ruling by the 13th Court. He said he would be discussing the matter with his son and attorney, Ric Salinas.
“One of the satisfactions I got out of the lawsuit is that she (Ester Salinas) needs to understand that she cannot go out there and say things that are not right,” Mayor Salinas said. “It is not about the money. I think she understands where we are coming from. We probably got her straightened out. That is worth more than whatever she was going to pay us because I know she was not going to pay us anyway.”
Mayor Salinas said he doubted he would appeal the latest ruling.
“Whatever the Supreme Court decided is fine with me,” Mayor Salinas said. “I just want her to understand that she cannot just go out there and say things that are not true. She (Ester Salinas) has quieted down quite a bit and we are happy she has done that. All she needs to do is respect people and understand that you cannot just go out there and say things that are not true.”
During the trial, state District Judge Rose Reyna refused to let journalists report that Ester Salinas was being represented by the South Texas Civil Rights Project.
“This is a great victory for Ester Salinas, for the South Texas Civil Rights Project, and for supporters of free speech everywhere,” former STCRP Regional Director Corinna Spencer-Scheurich told the Guardian in June.
Spencer-Scheurich said the case should never have gone to court.
“The Supreme Court has clearly got it right. The law is really strong in protecting people under defamation cases that are brought to silence people,” Spencer-Scheurich said. “This case was being used as a weapon against Ester’s free speech and the Supreme Court cut right through that. It was a weapon used against Ester to control negative commentary.”
Spencer-Scheurich said the “victory” was all the more sweet because the Supreme Court, which is made up of nine Republican justices, did not even hear oral arguments. “The justices read our brief and together as a group said we were right. There was no additional briefing. It was a very simple case. They were like, ‘no, sorry, you are wrong, we’re sending this back for you to look at again’.”
Activist accused of slandering Mission mayor wins appeal
Gail Burkhardt
EDINBURG — A community activist will not have to pay the Mission mayor $30,000 after an appellate court recently reversed its decision on a 7-year-old slander case.
Mayor Norberto “Beto” Salinas accused Maria Ester Salinas, an activist in the Hayes-Sammons pesticide plant case, of defaming him during a city meeting, to a group of people at the grocery store, and during a television news interview.
The mayor won the case at the district court and Ester Salinas was ordered to pay him $30,000 for mental anguish. Ester Salinas appealed the case, and the 13th Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling on damages.
But Ester Salinas appealed again — to the Texas Supreme Court, where she won the appeal — and the case was sent back to the 13th Court of Appeals.
The second time around, the appellate court ruled there was not sufficient evidence to prove that Beto Salinas suffered mental anguish to receive the $30,000 in damages.
THE ALLEGED STATEMENTS
The mayor sued in 2005 after Ester Salinas spoke about him during an August City Council meeting. Ester Salinas spoke to the Council about relocating residents who lived near the Hayes-Sammons Chemical Co. plant.
About 1,700 people sued the company’s chemical providers claiming they’ve had miscarriages, cancer and debilitating birth defects among other major health problems from working at the plant and from the pesticide chemicals it spewed into the surrounding neighborhood.
Ester Salinas believed city officials were negligent in failing to warn residents about the contamination, according to the appellate court’s ruling.
During the August 2005 City Council meeting, Ester Salinas complained about the city’s use of money, while not helping relocate the southern Mission residents. According to the lawsuit, Ester Salinas said during the meeting that “justice day will come and some of you will be judged for the way you have stolen and lied and killed.”
The appellate court ruled that those statements were not slanderous because it was a criticism of Beto Salinas’ performance as mayor, not an accusation that he had actually committed a crime.
The decision states that “no ordinary listener would have perceived Ester’s remarks at the 2005 city council meeting as having charged Norberto with committing crimes.”
Beto Salinas also accused Ester Salinas of calling him a drug dealer to six or seven people at a grocery store and saying she’d heard he’d threatened to kill her during an interview with Telemundo.
The district court concluded that the mayor did not suffer mental anguish from the Telemundo statement.
In its second look, the appellate court determined there was not sufficient evidence to award Beto Salinas $30,000 for mental anguish based on the “drug dealer” statement.
‘WE WON FREEDOM OF SPEECH’
Ester Salinas said she is relieved with the judgment and contends that she never called the mayor a killer or drug dealer. When she spoke in front of City Council meetings, she said she was trying to work with the Council to help the people who lived near the pesticide plant.
“My intentions were always to go to the city officials to go ask for help,” she said.
Ester Salinas, who was represented by the South Texas Civil Rights Project, said the mayor was trying to suppress her free speech.
“We won this; we won freedom of speech,” she said.
Her attorney Elliot Tucker said his client deserved to be protected under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Beto Salinas said he don’t know what his next step will be.
“The good thing about this whole thing the people of Hidalgo County, the 12 jurors, knew that she was wrong and awarded us the money,” he said. “Now the (Texas) Supreme Court I don’t know what happened.”
He added that he hopes Ester Salinas “learned her lesson” about what she says in public.