A judge in Dallas County upheld a decision compelling Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to take a paternity test to determine whether or not he’s the biological father of a 27-year-old woman.
That woman, Alexandra Davis, sued Jones in 2022 claiming that the sports team owner was her father.
Judge Sandra Jackson handed down the order after a hearing on February 19, but documents revealing that decision weren’t uncovered until Wednesday by the Dallas Morning News.
Davis’ attorney, Kris Hayes, called the ruling a ‘huge victory’, adding, ‘Alex is in a position where she really no longer has to hide her truth or live under the thumb of fear and maybe she’s going to finally get some peace and we hope other families will have that same benefit from the judge following the law.
She alleges that she was conceived as the result of a relationship between Jones and her mother, Cynthia Davis, in the mid-1990s.
Court documents say that Jones and Cynthia Davis reached a settlement in which he agreed to support them financially as long as they didn’t publicly identify him as Alexandra’s father.
The suit filed by Alexandra on March 3, 2022, sought to have a court declare that she wasn’t bound by that agreement. Later, she dropped that suit – instead pursuing a way to legally prove that Jones is her father through testing.
A ruling by another judge previously compelled Jones to be subject to a genetic test, but Jones’ lawyers appealed. The ruling on February 19 is the result of that appeal.
During that hearing, three attorneys representing the Cowboys owner argued that a man who was married to Cynthia when Alexandra was born was her presumed father.
Davis’ attorneys said that wasn’t true, producing court documents from Arkansas stating in ‘plain and apparent words’ that the man who was married to Cynthia at the time wasn’t her father. Cynthia and that man have since separated.
Hayes argued that because Alexandra Davis doesn’t have a presumed father, Jones must either admit paternity or agree to a test.
Jones and Davis are also parties in another legal matter in a US district court, when Davis sued him for defamation back in March of 2023. That suit was both dismissed and refiled in the fall.
