In re Woodfill
No. 14-0667
Case Summary written by Jenée Durán, Staff Member.
The City Council of Houston adopted an equal rights ordinance, after which a number of citizens organized a petition drive asking the City Council to repeal the ordinance or put it to a popular vote. The petition’s organizers were able to garner about 55,000 signatures before it was submitted, but approximately 24,000 signatures were crossed through before the petition was submitted on July 3, 2014. The City Secretary reviewed the petition, determining that there were more than enough signatures on it for it to be valid. However, her report on the petition concluded with a paragraph noting the City Attorney’s findings of his review of the petition, indicating that many of the signatures were on pages that were invalid, disqualifying all signatures on them.
When the City Council announced that it would not reconsider the ordinance on August 4, 2014, the petition organizers sued the Mayor, City Secretary, and the City in district court, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. They also filed an original mandamus proceeding in the Fourteenth Court of Appeals that was denied. The petition organizers subsequently filed a supplemental petition in the district court, requesting a writ of mandamus. They also sought mandamus relief from the Supreme Court of Texas. While the proceedings in the Supreme Court were pending, the district court determined that the total number of signatures was less than the required amount and denied all relief requested by the petition organizers.
ISSUE: Whether the petition filed by a coalition of citizens was valid to invoke the City Council’s ministerial duty to reconsider and repeal the ordinance at issue or submit it to popular vote?
In this instance, the Court agreed with the petition organizers that the City Secretary had certified the petition and had invoked the City Council’s ministerial duty to reconsider and repeal the ordinance or submit it to popular vote. The Court reasoned that even if the City Council could not independently evaluate the petition as a predicate to its ministerial duty to act, it could not decide for itself that the petition was invalid and force the petition organizers to sue. It was obligated to fulfill its duties even if it believed that the City Secretary abused her discretion in certifying the petition. Because the Court believed that the legislative power reserved to the people of the City of Houston was not being honored, a writ of mandamus was conditionally granted, directing the City Council to comply with its duties to suspend enforcement of the ordinance and to reconsider and repeal it by August 24, 2015, or, if it was not repealed by that date, for the City Council to order that the ordinance be put to popular vote during the November 2015 election. The writ would issue only if the City Council refused to comply.