The county\u2019s legal response did not address any of the specific claims in Thompson\u2019s lawsuit. Instead, the county used a legal technique called a general denial. It\u2019s the rough equivalent of \u201cprove it.\u201d<\/p>\n
El Fronteriso\u2019s lawsuit claimed county commissioners exceeded their authority in passing changes which cut game room hours by more than half (from 97 hours per week to 45).<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s debilitating. I think that it\u2019s an undue burden, especially if you\u2019re operating legally,\u201d Thompson told LubbockLights.com after the changes took effect.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Kelly Rowe talked to LubbockLights.com before the lawsuit was filed. While Rowe is not a big fan of the county\u2019s ordinance, he\u2019s also not a fan of local game rooms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese places, by their very essence, are illegal,\u201d Rowe said.<\/p>\n
He called them criminal enterprises. Thompson said the sheriff is not taking into account an exception in state law for game rooms offering novelty prizes instead of cash.<\/p>\n
Thompson was charged recently with a Class A misdemeanor \u2013 specifically he was committing a game room ordinance violation that occurred in November.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was filed in the 237 the District Court \u2013 under Judge Les Hatch. However, Hatch recused himself. Ana Estevez, presiding judge of the Ninth Administrative Judicial Region, reassigned the case Thursday to visiting judge Patrick Pirtle. The case remains pending as both sides have a chance to collect evidence. No trial date has been set.<\/p>\n
Click here to see<\/a> the county\u2019s response. <\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n Related posts\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t– James Clark is the associate editor of Lubbock Lights. He worked in radio, television and digital media for a combined total of more than 30 years. He was Director of Digital News Content at KAMC,…\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/volunteer_activism_96dp_000000_FILL0_wght400_GRAD0_opsz48.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\tMore by James Clark\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lubbock County denied wrongdoing Thursday in its legal response to a game room lawsuit. The owner of El…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169],"class_list":["post-212946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}