SUMMARY: Ruby Lee Underwood, 29, a mother of two, tragically died in a multi-vehicle crash on San Antonio’s West Side involving motorcyclists thrown from their bikes after a speeding car lost control. The collision, which also injured three others, was a chain reaction caused by a car spinning out and hitting other vehicles. Ruby’s family mourns deeply, expressing shock and sorrow over her untimely death while cherishing her impact. Two suspects fled but were later caught and released pending investigation, prompting the family’s demand for justice. Ruby’s loved ones remember her as a guiding influence and a devoted mother whose loss is immeasurable.
A family is in mourning and demanding answers after a crash on the West Side killed a mother of two over the weekend.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-21 14:09:00
A North Texas district court ruled in favor of Texas in its lawsuit against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over Biden-era bathroom and pronoun policies. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that EEOC guidance, which redefined “sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, was unlawful. The guidance required employers to accommodate “gender identity” preferences, such as bathroom and pronoun use. The court struck down both the 2021 and 2024 EEOC guidance, ruling it exceeded statutory authority and contradicted Supreme Court rulings. Paxton hailed the decision as a victory for common sense and the rule of law.
(The Center Square ) – A north Texas district court has ruled in favor of Texas in a lawsuit brought against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over its Biden-era Enforcement Guidance on bathroom and pronoun policies.
Last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the EEOC, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and other federal officials to block an EEOC guidance that redefined the meaning of “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Center Square reported.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division, the same court where Paxton filed a lawsuit in 2021 to block similar EEOC guidance, which the court struck down.
In 2021, the EEOC issued guidance requiring employers to allow exceptions for employees with stated “gender preferences and identities” to use bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dress codes and personal pronouns contrary to their biological sex. Texas argued the guidance was unlawful and increased the scope of liability for all employers, including the state of Texas, which employed roughly 140,000 people in September 2022, according to the state comptroller’s office.
The lawsuit was later amended to include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a defendant after the agency promulgated a new rule threatening to cut federal funding to states that prohibit “sex-change” procedures on minors and classify the procedure as child abuse. Biden administration guidances would have allowed biological males to use women’s facilities and abolished sex-specific workplace dress codes.
The court struck down both rules, vacated the 2021 guidance and issued a binding declaratory judgment between the EEOC and Texas.
A similar ruling was issued on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The 2024 guidance sought to redefine “discrimination” to include “gender identity,” opening up private and state employers to lawsuits if they didn’t adopt sweeping “transgender inclusive policies” and comply with “pronoun police,” Paxton argued.
“The Biden Administration unlawfully tried to twist federal law into a tool for advancing radical gender ideology by attempting to force employers to adopt ‘transgender’ policies or risk being sued,” Paxton said. “The federal government has no right to force Texans to play along with delusions or ignore biological reality in our workplaces. This is a great victory for common sense and the rule of law.”
Kacsmaryk’s 34-page ruling says the EEOC exceeded its statutory authority and its guidance was “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent” and vacated it.
He also rejected EEOC’s arguments, said it misread the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v Clayton County, “cited no binding authority for its metastasized definition of ‘sex,’” and contravened Title VII by defining discriminatory harassment to include transgender bathroom, pronoun and dress preferences. He also said if Congress wanted to redefine “sex” in Title VII to include “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” it would have. “But it did not,” he wrote. “Congress has the power to amend statutes to add accommodations, EEOC does not. Yet that’s exactly what the enforcement guidance does.”
Kacsmaryk also listed sections of the guidance that he said are unlawful and vacated them.
The Trump administration EEOC is unlikely to appeal the ruling.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Right-Leaning
The article predominantly frames the EEOC and Biden administration policies regarding gender identity and workplace accommodations in a critical light, consistent with conservative perspectives on these issues. The use of phrases like “radical gender ideology,” “delusions,” and “pronoun police,” which are direct quotes from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, emphasizes a dismissive stance towards transgender-inclusive policies. The selection and presentation of legal arguments and rulings that invalidate federal guidance on gender identity also align with conservative legal interpretations. While the article reports facts about court rulings and legal disputes, the language and framing favor the Texas government’s viewpoint and legislative conservatism, contributing to a right-leaning ideological perspective rather than neutral, objective journalism.
SUMMARY: In Austin, questions about liability in crashes involving robotaxis have arisen. If a driverless vehicle, such as Tesla’s, is at fault, passengers may be liable, particularly in Level 2-3 vehicles where driver input is required. Texas laws, including Senate Bill 2205 and House Bill 3026, regulate autonomous vehicles, with state control over rules. Level 4 vehicles, like Waymo’s, may not hold passengers accountable, as these cars can operate without a driver. Passengers in such vehicles are not responsible for accident-related procedures, with the company providing insurance contact details. As of May 21, Waymo is the only robotaxi service in Austin.
Measles is spreading in West Texas, with El Paso seeing a high rate of adult infections. Although typically affecting children, two-thirds of the cases in El Paso are among adults. The county’s high vaccination rates for children, with 96% of kindergartners and 98% of seventh graders vaccinated, may be helping protect the younger population. Public health officials are now targeting adults for vaccination, as many may not remember their immunization status. Measles can lead to serious complications like pneumonia, and El Paso’s proximity to Mexico, where the outbreak has also spread, raises concerns about further transmission.
In El Paso, measles is infecting more adults than children
“In El Paso, measles is infecting more adults than children” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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As soon as measles started spreading in West Texas, El Paso health officials began preparing schools and day care facilities for the day the virus would inevitably arrive.
But now that it’s here, it’s not kids who are making up the brunt of the cases — it’s adults. Two-thirds of El Paso’s cases so far are among people over the age of 18, and only 7% are among school-age children.
Anyone unvaccinated can contract measles, but it tends to hit children first and hardest. Most children are not fully vaccinated until they are five years old and they spend more time than adults in congregate settings where the virus can spread quickly. More families of young children are opting out of vaccines, leaving them exposed.
Gaines County, the epicenter of the outbreak, followed this traditional path, starting with school-age children before spreading to adults. Almost six months into what is now the country’s largest measles outbreak since 2000, Texas’ 722 cases are about evenly spread between the three age groups the state divides them into: under four, 5-17 and adults.
El Paso stands out for its high rate of adult infections. The county only has 56 cases so far, the third-highest among Texas counties but still too small of a sample size to conclude much, public health experts say. But if this trend holds, it may be a credit to El Paso’s high vaccination rates among kids — 96% of kindergartners and 98% of seventh graders are fully vaccinated for measles, higher than the percent required to maintain herd immunity. The state does not track adult vaccination rates.
“That is one of the protective factors that we feel is helping us,” said El Paso public health authority Hector Ocaranza. “But still we’re going to continue to see cases of measles that are going to be clustering in some of the schools or day cares that have low immunization rates.”
These surprising initial statistics have required public health officials to change their outbreak response on the fly. They’re aiming more of their vaccination events specifically at adults, especially as many health care providers who serve adults do not have the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine on hand the way pediatricians do.
“Most of the adults, they don’t remember whether they’ve had the MMR vaccine,” Ocaranza said. “They were kids, and nobody has a shot record.”
Adults unsure of whether they were vaccinated as children can safely get another round of the shots, said Patsy Stinchfield, past president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a measles expert.
“If you did have two [shots] already, it will only make your full antibody cup even fuller,” Stinchfield said.
Older adults especially should consult with their doctor about their immunization status, she said. People born before 1957 are presumed immune, since the virus was so common back then, but some people who got an early version of the vaccine between 1963 and 1967 may not have gotten the same protection as later shots.
The exceptions, she said, are people who are immunocompromised, pregnant women or the tiny minority of people who have had a bad reaction to the vaccine in the past. Those people are counting on everyone else’s vaccination status to keep them healthy.
Healthy adults are generally able to fight off the worst of a measles infection, but anyone who gets infected runs the risk of it morphing into pneumonia or worse, said Ben Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University. Three of the five hospitalizations in El Paso so far are in adults.
And anyone with measles will spread it in the community, potentially to children too young to be vaccinated who are especially vulnerable to the worst outcomes, like encephalitis, deafness, blindness and permanent brain damage.
“Especially kids two years and under, their immune systems are just bad at everything,” Neuman said. “We’re all sort of helping them out with our herd immunity.”
Neuman said it’s possible that El Paso’s high rate of adult cases is “the first sign of something weird,” but he anticipates the data will start to look more normal as more people get tested.
El Paso borders the Mexican state of Chihuahua, where the outbreak that originated in Texas has taken hold due to the large Mennonite communities in both places. Ocaranza said measles doesn’t respect borders, and he anticipates it spreading vociferously on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico line now that it’s in El Paso.
The messaging is the same, whether it’s children or adults who are testing positive, in Mexico or the United States, he said: Get vaccinated.
“We welcome anybody who needs the vaccine,” he said. “We can vaccinate regardless of their place of residence, regardless of their immigration status, regardless of the ability to pay … Everyone needs to join forces to stop this.”
Disclosure: Texas A&M University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The article is largely focused on a public health issue—measles outbreaks in El Paso—offering a factual account of the situation and the local response. The language is neutral, presenting statements from health officials, medical experts, and public health data without introducing any political or ideological perspectives. The inclusion of both local and expert opinions further emphasizes the aim to inform rather than advocate for a particular viewpoint. Additionally, the article adheres to a non-partisan stance, highlighting health measures and facts while avoiding politically charged language or policy endorsements.
