{"id":286909,"date":"2025-10-08T16:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T16:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286909\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T16:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T16:08:09","slug":"sanctioned-judge-amber-givens-will-get-pay-supplement-after-suing-dallas-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286909\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanctioned Judge Amber Givens will get pay supplement after suing Dallas County"},"content":{"rendered":"

After voting last month to withhold annual supplemental pay from a district judge for performance concerns, the Dallas County Commissioners Court has changed course.<\/p>\n

Commissioners voted 3-1 Tuesday to amend the 2026 fiscal year budget <\/a>to include the $25,000 bonus for Judge Amber Givens. <\/p>\n

The reversal comes after Givens sued Dallas County<\/a>, alleging in a lawsuit that the Sept. 9 vote to withhold her supplemental pay while giving it to other district judges was illegal and discriminatory.<\/p>\n

County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins abstained from the vote Tuesday and Commissioner John Wiley Price voted no.<\/p>\n

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\u201cJust can\u2019t do it,\u201d Jenkins said.<\/p>\n

A hearing on Given\u2019s requested temporary injunction is scheduled for Monday, according to court records.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year Givens was sanctioned twice by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct \u2014 the first for allowing her court coordinator<\/a> to conduct an online hearing with Givens\u2019 picture on the screen without informing the parties the judge wasn\u2019t actually there. The second was for jailing one man and revoking another\u2019s bond in 2023 while she was recused from both cases and \u201clacked the legal authority to act\u201d on them, according to the sanction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During the Sept. 9 budget discussion, Assistant County Administrator Charles Reed said if the supplement was not tied to a performance plan, the county could give the pay to one district judge but not another. <\/p>\n

Given\u2019s lawsuit alleged the county did not have such discretion. Her complaint cited Texas government code which states \u201call district judges in a county are entitled to equal amounts of supplemental compensation from the county.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Givens nor her attorney Nuru Witherspoon responded immediately to a request for comment Wednesday. <\/p>\n

Price voted against the Commissioner Court\u2019s original Sept. 9 decision to withhold the pay. Although Price recited a list of judges whom he didn\u2019t believe deserved the additional money, he said state law requires all judges to receive it. <\/p>\n

Jenkins proposed for Given\u2019s pay be voted on separately in the budget.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, after Jenkins\u2019 abstained, Price voiced support for giving Givens the pay but then voted against the measure without explaining why. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re giving it to other judges who have not performed … might as well add one more judge who has not performed, in my opinion,\u201d Price said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After voting last month to withhold annual supplemental pay from a district judge for performance concerns, the Dallas…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":286910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,356,1596,7290,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-286909","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-texas","13":"tag-tx","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115339415085015500","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286909","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=286909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}