ODESSA, Texas — Less than 24 hours after an Odessa City Council meeting led to the firing of two city employees, a lawsuit is in the works.
Gaven Norris, Managing Attorney at Gaven Norris Law Office, is filing a lawsuit against the City of Odessa. The reason for the lawsuit is to address the actions by the City Council during the Public Meeting, but it goes further than that. Norris said the wrongdoings have been happening for years.
"It’s okay, we’ll just file a suit against the City since you don’t want us to speak on the items as you have them on the agenda," said Norris during Tuesday night's meeting.
"Before last night, we were in the process of planning to file a lawsuit against the City based on the mayor's actions and the Council's tacit approval of the mayor's actions and his official capacity, which violates the First Amendment establishment clause, the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clauses," he said.
Norris said the Council did not allow public comment from those in attendance prior to the agenda items that addressed the firing of City Manager Michael Marrero and City Attorney Natasha Brooks.
"Once the Council started the meeting and came back from executive session the normal standard operating procedure is you discuss an item, then you have public comment," he said. "We were going to speak on behalf of Natasha Brooks and Mr. Marrero to address the council on our concerns that was denied."
According to Norris, the Council denying citizens that right furthered their reason to sue the City.
"We needed a few things to happen and based on the mayor doing what he did last night which was not unexpected, that gives us certain grounds to move forward with that suit. It just fell in our lap that the mayor decided to violate our rights last night for our ability to speak," said Norris.
Norris wants to send a clear message to the Odessa City Council and the Mayor.
"We want to make sure we let them know that there are restraints on what they can and can’t do. The mayor and his clique of Council members can’t just run roughshod through the City without being held accountable and regards and that’s what the lawsuits are set to do," said Norris.
"He's accountable to the citizens that elected him and we are the citizens and if he doesn’t want to give us our voice then either we need to take action at the poll and we need to take action at court and that’s what set us up for where we are right now," he said.
Norris and his team have been consulting with the NAACP, LULAC, local groups and other attorneys and they're already organizing together.