{"id":359655,"date":"2026-07-03T06:26:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T06:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/359655\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T06:26:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T06:26:27","slug":"former-houston-dash-coach-loses-defamation-suit-against-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/359655\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Houston Dash coach loses defamation suit against club"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Texas court dismissed<\/a> a defamation lawsuit from former Houston Dash<\/a> head coach James Clarkson<\/a> on Tuesday, more than three years after he was suspended and subsequently dismissed from the Dash after an investigation by the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).<\/p>\n

Clarkson filed his defamation lawsuit in 2023, and a Harris County trial court initially declined to dismiss the lawsuit. That decision was overruled by the First Court of Appeals in Texas on Tuesday, which said Clarkson didn’t have proper standing to prove “actual malice” in his defamation lawsuit given his reported conduct as the Dash’s coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clarkson was suspended in April 2022 after a joint investigation between the NWSL and the league’s Players Association. The investigation recommended Clarkson be “suspended immediately” after a string of reported incidents that alleged “complaints of discrimination, harassment, and abuse.”<\/p>\n

Clarkson’s documented incidents included the following, per the joint investigation:<\/p>\n

Clarkson, an England native, played one year of professional soccer in New Zealand in 1995. He was the head coach of the Dynamo’s development team, \u00a0Brazos Valley Cavalry FC. He coached the Dash from 2019-22, and his contract was not renewed after his suspension following the 2017 season. He has not returned to the NWSL or professional soccer since his 2022 exit from the Dash.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas court dismissed a defamation lawsuit from former Houston Dash head coach James Clarkson on Tuesday, more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1836,1704,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-359655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-chronnews","tag-chronstaff","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359655","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=359655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}