{"id":245880,"date":"2025-09-22T08:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T08:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/245880\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T08:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T08:19:10","slug":"dallas-county-judge-amber-givens-doesnt-deserve-a-bonus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/245880\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas County Judge Amber Givens doesn\u2019t deserve a bonus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most people who get formally reprimanded at work twice in a single year wouldn\u2019t expect to keep their job very long. They sure wouldn\u2019t expect to get a bonus. Unless, it would seem, they happen to be Judge Amber Givens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dallas County commissioners recently voted to give every district judge except Givens a $25,000 salary supplement. She responded by suing the county and the Commissioners Court, our newsroom colleague Tracey McManus reported.<\/p>\n

At the core of this mess is the question of whether the county has the authority to give some district judges supplemental pay while withholding it from others, McManus reported. Givens\u2019 lawsuit alleges that the county\u2019s decision violates Texas Government Code.<\/p>\n

Givens might be right and she might be wrong on the legal argument. We don\u2019t know. But whatever the courts decide, she sure doesn\u2019t deserve additional pay. She doesn\u2019t even belong on the bench<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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Givens was sanctioned by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct<\/a> this year after allegations that she ordered her court coordinator to impersonate her during an online proceeding, this newspaper reported. Two instances of interference in cases she had been recused from led to another sanction<\/a>, also this year. And last year, there was Givens\u2019 docket scheduling stunt when she set more than 100 cases for jury trial on a single day.<\/p>\n

The judicial conduct commission said that Givens \u201crepeatedly disrespected attorneys, acted with bias or prejudice and lacked competence in the law,\u201d our newsroom reported in July.<\/p>\n

We reached out to Givens for an explanation but did not receive a response as of this writing.<\/p>\n

During the Commissioners Court meeting earlier this month, County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins proposed the idea of voting on Givens\u2019 supplemental pay separately, McManus reported. He deserves credit for bringing the issue forward. <\/p>\n

Supplemental pay is an important part of how we compensate judges. It\u2019s a way of incentivizing qualified people to stay on the bench. After all, many of them could make more money in the private sector. A lot more money. <\/p>\n

But bonus pay shouldn\u2019t be automatic. The Commissioners Court should be willing and able to withhold it from judges who don\u2019t measure up. <\/p>\n

The question of whether the county is legally allowed to do so needs a legal judgment. But one thing\u2019s for sure: Some judges don\u2019t deserve a bonus, and Givens is decisively one of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most people who get formally reprimanded at work twice in a single year wouldn\u2019t expect to keep their…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":245881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,356,1596,7290,6083,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-245880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-county","12":"tag-editorials","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115246973846702610","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}