The Dallas City Council is about to introduce an ordinance to ban horse-drawn carriages in the City of Dallas, attempting to appease the animal rights agenda. The proposed ordinance is part of an ongoing national campaign spearheaded by well-funded radical animal rights organizations. But that’s only part of the story.

Last year, in 2023, the Texas State Legislature passed a bill called the Regulatory Consistency Act (HB2127) which prohibits local cities, counties, and local municipalities from adopting or enforcing an ordinance, order, rule, or policy that bans an existing law-abiding business.

According to this new law, Dallas City Council is acting unlawfully by introducing this ordinance to ban horse-drawn carriage businesses in the city of Dallas. 

The anti-horse carriage campaign is largely pushed by animal-rights syndicates from outside the state of Texas. These groups have been working to pass these legislative bans on lawful horse- carriage businesses city by city, county by county for the last decade. Texas representative Dustin Burrows, the main sponsor of the Regulatory Consistency Act, wrote the bill with the clear understanding of aggressive attacks by animal rights and other special interest groups with extreme agendas which have been "creating a patchwork of unnecessary and anti-business ordinances across our state," Burrows stated shortly after his bill was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott.  

‘Animal rights’ is an extreme political agenda that has been chipping away incrementally for the last 50 years to end animal use in every capacity -- everything from the beloved pet on your lap to the steak on your plate. Animal rights organizations work to achieve their goals through legislation and their campaigns to raise money while incrementally altering Americans’ views about working animals and animal agriculture through media, our schools, through legislation, consumerism, and even through litigation.

These animal-rights organizations count on the public, and even lawmakers, remaining uninformed about their goals so that they may continue to raise money and pass legislation based on their untruths, false information, and emotional propaganda. Sadly, though, there are lawmakers who have abandoned their constituents to side with animal-rights groups in their legislative push whether it is because of financial gain or coercion.

While we must certainly take the welfare of animals seriously, there is no reason to ban horse-drawn carriages in Dallas. There have been no incidents involving equine injuries, or injuries of passengers or pedestrians. There is zero evidence that horse-drawn carriages are inhumane to horses -- only the opinion of animal-rights ideologues and their blind followers.

These legislative bans are examples of why my organization, the Cavalry Group, has worked to pass the Working Animal Protection Act in Oklahoma, Arkansas, along with the Regulatory Consistency Act in Texas, to protect against well-funded radical groups from passing legislative bans on law-abiding businesses which have become symbolic of our American way of life and culture.

Texas has always been a stronghold for American values, traditions, and common sense. Sadly, the culture is changing in states where we never thought possible, which is why the Regulatory Consistency Act was passed. It prevents extreme ideologies from destroying states from the inside.

The Regulatory Consistency Act is the perfect vehicle to protect all Texas businesses from these type of attacks.  We call upon the Texas attorney general Ken Paxton to step in and advise the city of Dallas to curtail their efforts to circumvent Texas state law and protect all Texas businesses.  Luckily, the Regulatory Consistency Act also provides business owners with standing to sue any city or county for damages to their business resulting from illegal attempts to overthrow state law.

Attorney General Paxton has been very effective at countering unlawful attempts by the federal government and local jurisdictions to protect Texan citizens and Texas businesses.  Our hope is that the Dallas City Council recognizes quickly that pursuing this effort is unlawful in the state of Texas, and makes plans to withdraw any ban horse-drawn carriages before it is scheduled to be reviewed in April to avoid a potentially expensive counteraction by the state and other interested parties wanting to protect Texas businesses.

Mindy Patterson is the president of The Cavalry Group, a member based company protecting and defending the Constitutional and private property rights of law-abiding animal owners, animal-related businesses, farmers and ranchers legislatively and legally nationwide.

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