concern in deciphering whether an act is ministerial “ ‘is whether the respondent had the authority’ to do what is the subject of the complaint.” Id. Citing State ex rel. Thomas v. Banner, 724 S.W.2d 81, 83 (Tex.Cr.App.1987). In this instance, that act is to order the struck venireperson reinstated on the panel and seated on the jury. I. BATSON AND IT’S PROGENY In Batson, the United States Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the state’s use of peremptory challenges to purposefully or deliberately exclude black persons from jury participation solely on account of their race. Id. at 86, 106 S.Ct. at 1717. Thereafter, the Supreme Court extended the focus of Batson, Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 113 L.Ed.2d 411 (1991) (<HOLDING>), civil litigants, Edmonson v. Leesville
holding that the fourteenth amendment protects every person against purely racially motivated exercise of peremptory challenges holding that courts must entertain a challenge to a private litigants racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges in a civil trial holding that genderbased peremptory challenges also violate the fourteenth amendment holding that racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment holding that due process clause of fourteenth amendment protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime for which he is charged