Alton Attorney Asks Court To Dissolve Goins Restraining Order
Attorney argues Alton mayor is not entitled to court protection against ordinances he signed before challenging.
ALTON – A legal representative for the City of Alton in its lawsuit with Mayor David Goins says the court should dissolve an order blocking two ordinances after the mayor signed them into law himself.
Attorney Patrick Watts filed a motion on behalf of the City of Alton to dissolve the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) granted to Goins in his lawsuit against the City of Alton. The motion was filed on Aug. 24, 2026, nearly one month after the TRO was granted.
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Under the terms of the TRO, two previously ousted city employees were reinstated and the City Council was blocked from enforcing new attorney billing requirements and other elements of the ordinances being challenged. While the TRO has since expired, both parties agreed to “maintain the status quo” on Aug. 12, 2026 pending further court proceedings.
Watts claims in his motion that Goins is not entitled to protections under the TRO, including blocking the City Council from enforcing the ordinances, since the mayor himself signed both ordinances into law.
“This case asks the Court whether a Mayor can sue the City he manages to invalidate the laws he signs,” the motion states. “It is unclear how a mayor, in his official capacity, can be harmed by his own official acts (in this case, signing both ordinances into law).”
The case of Goins vs. City of Alton will ultimately determine whether the City Council was legally authorized to nullify the mayor’s appointees before their terms expired and require more detailed billing information from the city attorney. In his motion, Watts argues the council’s actions would not have been possible without the mayor’s signature.
“Even if the Mayor is correct – if the Council lacked the power to set these types of qualifications and term durations represented in the ordinances – in the immortal words of Pearl Bailey, ‘It takes two to tango,’” the motion states. “Neither ordinance would have become law without the mayor’s exercise of his own independent authority.”
The motion also frames the dispute between the city and mayor as an intergovernmental political conflict in which further court intervention “is not only unnecessary, but unconstitutional.”
The case is currently assigned to Judge Christopher Bauer, with no hearing date set.
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