A closed lawsuit in search of to stall a controversial restoration challenge in San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park shall be again in courtroom early subsequent month after its plaintiffs filed a petition for a rehearing.
The Texas Supreme Courtroom will hear oral arguments from each the plaintiffs — Gary Perez and Matilde Torres, two members of Native American Church — and the defendants, the Metropolis of San Antonio, on Dec. 4. to debate a attainable rehearing on a case centered on whether or not town may proceed with building within the park as a part of a 2017 bond challenge.
In August 2023, Perez and Torres first filed a go well with in opposition to town, claiming that the bond challenge’s plan to take away timber and carry out fowl mitigation efforts close to Joske Pavilion interfered with their capacity to apply their faith.
The challenge, accredited by voters as a part of the 2017 municipal bond, seeks to revive a number of historic buildings within the park round Lambert Seashore, together with an 1870s pump home and Twenties-era retaining partitions. Nevertheless a particular bend within the river right here holds spiritual significance to the plaintiffs, and so they argue the timber slated for elimination to stop harm to the retaining partitions would go in opposition to their beliefs.
Whereas U.S. District Decide Fred Biery dominated that town should grant the 2 entry to this sacred spot on the river for prayer, he additionally denied Perez and Torres’s request for injunctions to delay the challenge together with the elimination of timber till the plaintiffs and metropolis can agree on a plan “that preserves the Park’s religious ecology.”
Biery referred to as the case a tough one after listening to 4 days of testimony in September 2023 from the plaintiffs, spiritual specialists, town, arborists and engineers.
John Greil, an lawyer representing the plaintiffs and a professor at the College of Texas Legislation and Faith Clinic, instructed the San Antonio Report in October 2023 that the plaintiffs deliberate to enchantment Biery’s choices.
And on Oct. 14 they made the formal request to the courtroom to rethink its resolution or ruling.
This time round, the plaintiffs are using and testing a brand new state constitutional modification that was added post-COVID particularly to guard spiritual companies from any legal guidelines or guidelines that might restrict them. The constitutional modification was accredited by Texas voters in 2021 after sure service restrictions have been applied throughout the pandemic.
Of their up to date case, Perez and Torres argue they’ll’t carry out their spiritual ceremonies with out the timber slated for elimination and cormorants that will in any other case be subjected to town’s fowl mitigation efforts.
In response to the submitting, metropolis attorneys argue that the state modification shouldn’t be interpreted as which means it applies to any and all circumstances.
“…a really absolute bar on ‘any’ limitation in any respect would indicate a proper of unprecedented scope, unrecognizable to historical past and custom, with absurd unintended penalties,” the responding temporary states.
Whereas building on the stalled bond challenge has but to begin, discussions of how one can incorporate the park’s wealthy Native American historical past into future initiatives are at play, confirmed Chris Maitre, Brackenridge Park Conservancy’s new CEO.
Maitre instructed the San Antonio Report that design ideas for a brand new nature playscape at Brackenridge Park embody options that commemorate completely different components of native American historical past, together with a prehistoric campsite space and attainable unfastened artifacts in concrete simulating archeological digs.
Plans for the brand new playscape may additionally embody reusing the timber that are slated for elimination throughout the first section of the park’s restoration.
