HOUSTON, TX – Today, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), alongside lawyers at Brazil & Dunn and the Greenwood Prather Law Firm, declared victory after a multi-million dollar verdict was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The decision handed down by Judge Leslie H. Southwick requires Lawrence Marshall and others to pay as much as $5,000,000 to the plaintiffs, the Gil Ramirez Group. Ramirez was locked out of the school district’s construction contracts after refusing to participate in the scheme in which the school board president, Marshall, was accepting bribes in cash and campaign contributions in exchange for preferential treatment with the award of lucrative public construction contracts.

“This decision affirms the fact that city officials in a position of public trust should work to ensure that public funds benefit the students and employees of their school districts. We are pleased that the victims of this pay-to-play scheme saw justice done today,” said Danielle Lang, co-director, voting rights and redistricting, at CLC, who delivered oral arguments in the case. The case was also litigated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas by Gerry Hebert, senior director of voting rights and redistricting at CLC. CLC has been part of a legal team representing the Gil Ramirez Group, since 2016.

"After more than a decade of hard fought court struggles by our courageous client Gil Ramirez, Jr., the Fifth Circuit has affirmed the finding of the jury and trial court judge in this case that pay to play bribery scheme was going on at the Houston Independent School District,” said Chad Dunn of the Houston-based law firm Brazil & Dunn. “State, local and school district leaders should stand up to attention at this finding and pick up where the jury's work ended by taking important steps to root out corruption in one of the largest public school districts in our nation."

The case is called Gil Ramirez Group v. Houston Independent School District.

Cruz fined $35k for keeping voters in the dark about source of loans

WASHINGTON – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) announced that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has fined U.S. Senator Ted Cruz $35,000 for inaccurately reporting the source of campaign loans totaling $1,064,000, a violation of federal law, stemming from a complaint filed by CLC and Democracy 21 in 2016. After concluding their investigation, the FEC found Cruz obtained loans from Citibank and Goldman Sachs for use in his 2012 Senate campaign but improperly reported these loans as coming from his “personal funds.”

“Candidates should take seriously their legal requirement to disclose where their campaign money comes from. Today’s announcement is an acknowledgement that Cruz’s campaign deprived voters of that critical information,” said Tara Malloy, senior director, appellate litigation and strategy at CLC. “In the homestretch of a high-profile election, voters were misled about Cruz’s personal and campaign finances. This is particularly harmful given that financial issues were at issue in the campaign and could have factored into voters’ decision-making at the ballot box.”

The FEC conducted an audit of Cruz’s campaign activity and found that of the $1.43 million in loans that were reported as having come from Cruz’s personal funds, he actually borrowed $800,000 from three loans secured by a Goldman Sachs brokerage account he held jointly with his wife. In a conciliation agreement with the FEC, the Cruz campaign admits that it failed to timely provide the required information about the loans and concedes it has still not amended its reports.

Cruz faced scrutiny for not disclosing the Goldman Sachs loan he used for his 2012 Senate campaign after a 2013 interview with The New York Times in which Senator Cruz reportedly stated that he and his wife, Heidi Cruz, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, agreed to “liquidate” their “entire net worth” to free up the funds necessary for the campaign. Only now, years after the campaign, the public has a clear picture of the holes in that story – which was once a major narrative of his campaign.