{"id":399980,"date":"2026-08-07T05:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T05:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/399980\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T05:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T05:56:14","slug":"judge-finds-austin-likely-violated-property-owners-due-process-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/399980\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Finds Austin Likely Violated Property Owners\u2019 Due Process Rights\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the City of Austin from reasserting jurisdiction over roughly 170 properties the city had previously released under state law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In granting the preliminary injunction, the court found<\/a> Austin likely violated the property owners\u2019 due process rights and lacked the legal authority to revoke the releases once they had been granted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAustin acts as though there\u2019s no limit on its power. But the Constitution and Texas law have established clear boundaries on government authority \u2014 and the Court agrees,\u201d said<\/a> Alexa Gervasi of Cobb & Gervasi, PLLC, who represents the plaintiffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A coalition of property owners<\/a> and the Schoenstatt Movement of Austin<\/a> filed a lawsuit<\/a> against the city in June 2026 after Austin attempted to place their land back into its extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ), an area outside city limits where property owners are subject to certain city development regulations but cannot vote in city elections or receive most city services.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The properties were originally released under a 2023 state law<\/a>, allowing landowners to petition for release from a city\u2019s jurisdiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the complaint, approximately 170 property owners successfully petitioned for release from Austin\u2019s ETJ over the past three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In March 2026, plaintiffs allege Austin rescinded those decisions \u201cwithout a word of warning,\u201d in some cases issuing violation notices the same day it sent the retraction letters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city claimed the properties should not have been released, citing their proximity to Bee Caves Armory. State law does not require the release of properties within five miles of a military base. Plaintiffs dispute that the armory qualifies, noting it doesn\u2019t appear on Texas\u2019 list<\/a> of military installations.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs say Austin\u2019s reversal stalled expansion projects, with developers at risk of losing \u201chundreds of millions of dollars in hard costs\u201d invested in architectural plans and construction loans. The group alleges some property market values fell by two-thirds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One plaintiff, the Schoenstatt Movement of Austin, says its development plans have stalled because the city\u2019s reversal blocked the permits it needed. The chapel has outgrown its current campus and now holds Mass outdoors, turning parishioners away in bad weather, the exact problem the stalled development was meant to fix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In granting the preliminary injunction, the court rejected Austin\u2019s argument that it could invalidate previously approved releases, calling the argument a \u201cnonsensical proposition.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The judge also concluded it was unnecessary at this stage to decide whether Bee Caves Armory qualifies as a military base because the city had not shown it could revoke completed releases in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis ruling reaffirms a basic limit on government power: a city cannot hand you a right and then revoke it on a whim,\u201d said Bill Cobb, co-counsel for the plaintiffs. \u201cWhen the Legislature let these owners out of Austin\u2019s ETJ, that was the end of the city\u2019s authority over their land. This decision protects not just these property owners, but every Texan who relies on the government keeping its word.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The preliminary injunction prohibits Austin from treating the properties as part of its jurisdiction while the lawsuit proceeds. The court found the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claims that the city exceeded its legal authority and violated their due process rights. <\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\n Mary Berg is a writing fellow for Texas Scorecard. A student at UT Austin, her interests include economics, all things music, and the power of stories. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge has temporarily blocked the City of Austin from reasserting jurisdiction over roughly 170 properties the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,124418,122685],"class_list":["post-399980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-local-governance","tag-private-property"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399980","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=399980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}