Did you know Texas has created a separate court system to hear corporate cases?

The lengths to which Republican governors are going to create fiefdoms in which they can carry out their conservative ideas is mind-boggling.

Questionable policies on gender identity, abortion, guns, book banning, critical race theory, elections, immigration, and more are increasingly troubling.

Then I read on the Public Citizen website that Texas has taken an egregious step unlike anything I’ve ever heard of.

The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature has created a statewide courts system that has begun its work as of Sept. 1, allowing corporations to bypass existing courts with democratically-elected judges in favor of judges hand-picked by Gov. Greg Abbott.

I was shocked. I haven’t seen anything in the news about this.

In addition to creating these courts, the legislature also passed HB 2627 that blocks cities and counties from creating local rules that are best for those communities, including on issues that concern public health, safety, and the environment.

The new courts include:

• The Business Court Judicial District’s jurisdiction includes civil cases involving corporations in which the disputed amount is $10 million or more. Appeals from this court go to the new 15th Court of Appeals. These courts will allow corporations to avoid courts with judges elected in the state’s population centers, areas that tend to lean Democratic.

• The 15th Court of Appeals has jurisdiction over cases involving agencies such as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the state’s oil and gas regulator, the Railroad Commission of Texas.

“Why bother judge-shopping when you can just invent a new court?” said Adrian Shelley, Texas director of Public Citizen, a citizens’ advocacy group.

“There is an ongoing campaign to rip power away from institutions considered unfriendly to the agenda of the state’s Republican majority,” said Shelley. “Voters have already chosen the judges they want to head the courts in their communities; Greg Abbott is rejecting that choice by creating new courts that launch with unelected judges he picked.”

These maneuvers are not only a threat to public health and the environment but also undemocratic, he said, adding just as state lawmakers view democratically elected city councils as standing in their way, especially in blue-leaning cities, they don’t want the courts checking their power.

I’m stunned by this move that is against the public interest and I don’t understand why I haven’t been reading lots of negative headlines about it.

This law further shifts power in favor of corporations away from consumers. It's a disaster for consumers.