As Wendy Davis touts life story in race for governor, key facts blurred
...While they dated, Wendy Davis enrolled at Texas Christian University on an academic scholarship and a Pell Grant. After they married, when she was 24, they moved into a historic home in the Mistletoe Heights neighborhood of Fort Worth.

Jeff Davis paid for her final two years at TCU. “It was community resources. We paid for it together,” Wendy Davis said.

When she was accepted to Harvard Law School, Jeff Davis cashed in his 401(k) account and eventually took out a loan to pay for her final year there....

...Over time, the Davises’ marriage was strained. In November 2003, Wendy Davis moved out.

Jeff Davis said that was right around the time the final payment on their Harvard Law School loan was due. “It was ironic,” he said. “I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left.”...

Wendy Davis’s Thin Skin
...Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Fort Worth city council in 1996, Davis sued the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, along with parent companies ABC and Disney, for libel, alleging that the paper’s coverage of her campaign had been biased and “demonizing,” caused harm to her physical and mental health, and infringed on her “right to pursue public offices in the past and in the future.” Davis demanded “significant exemplary damages” in return.

The suit, which was roundly dismissed on three separate occasions after Davis appealed all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, centered on a series of “libelous and defamatory” articles about her candidacy, which, she alleged, were authored “with an intent to inflict emotional distress” and to deny her rights under the First Amendment....

...Davis’s lawsuit argued that the editorial, and others like it, “was meant to injure [her] reputation . . . and thereby expose her to public hatred, contempt and ridicule.” It also criticized the Star-Telegram for failing to report on the allegations against Hirt detailed in the flier; Davis’s campaign had provided information on the allegations to the paper.

The complaint itself was light on subtlety and nuance, arguing that the paper’s conduct “was extreme and outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” As a result of the paper’s actions, Davis alleged, she had “suffered and is continuing to suffer damages to her mental health, her physical health, her right to pursue public offices in the past and in the future, and to her legal career” and deserved financial compensation.

The suit was essentially laughed out of court. It was quickly dismissed by a district-court judge, who sustained all of the defendants’ objections, largely on the grounds that Davis had failed to present legitimate evidence to support her libel claim. It was unanimously rejected by an appellate court three years later and ultimately by the Texas Supreme Court. The defense appears to have had a relatively easy job arguing that Davis was challenging a newspaper’s right to express an opinion she disagreed with, a challenge that obviously ran afoul of the First Amendment....