FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:
December 10, 2025 Jerad Najvar (281) 684-1227
Lawsuit alleges both the City and VIA violate the Texas Constitution and Transportation Code in shoveling extra sales tax revenue to VIA
SAN ANTONIO, TEX. – In an amended petition filed this week, SAFA Action (sister organization to the San Antonio Family Association) added VIA Metropolitan Transit as a defendant in its lawsuit challenging the City of San Antonio’s illegal plan to fund the “Bus Rapid Transit” boondoggle. SAFA Action will be seeking an injunction against the City and VIA to stop their illegal agreement to shovel extra sales tax revenue from the City to VIA. Plaintiffs hope to stop the entire project, preserving fiscal sanity—and San Pedro Avenue—in the process.
SAFA Action and several individual taxpayers originally filed suit in September against the City of San Antonio. The lawsuit takes aim at the City’s agreement to send more than $13 Million in sales tax revenues a year—in perpetuity—for VIA’s unelected board to spend on the Bus Rapid Transit project. The original lawsuit already explained that this plan—to shovel more San Antonio sales tax revenue to VIA than voters approved in 2020—violates the Texas Constitution, the Transportation Code, and the City’s own charter, by severing any political accountability for how these funds are spent.
The amended petition now adds VIA as a defendant, alleging that VIA itself violates the Constitution and the Transportation Code by accepting the additional sales tax revenue.
Importantly, Plaintiffs also specifically target VIA’s ill-conceived venture into housing policy, illustrated by VIA’s indefinitely-stalled plan to redevelop the Scobey complex. The lawsuit alleges that VIA has no statutory authority to purchase real estate, or make any other expenditures, for housing or business redevelopment. SAFA Action is asking the court to order VIA to disgorge the Scobey complex and enjoin any further expenditures on it or any other such projects outside of VIA’s actual authority.
The amended petition was filed December 8, 2025. The suit is styled Catholic Family Apostolate, d/b/a SAFA Action, et al. v. City of San Antonio et al., No. 2025 CI 22315, pending in the 37th Judicial District Court of Bexar County.
Plaintiffs will be seeking an injunction to prevent the transfer of the additional sales tax revenue to VIA before the first such transfer is set to occur in March 2026.
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Jerad Najvar, based in Houston, litigates constitutional and election law matters in state and federal courts. He represented SAFA in its successful First Amendment challenge to a Texas statute that limited the speech of newly-registered political committees in 2014, and has prevailed in cases against Austin, Houston, the Federal Election Commission, and the Food & Drug Administration. He is a member of Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman LLC.