Good.
Still a crook any way you look
A Texas appeals court this week denied Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office’s request to question a nun who leads Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, one of the state’s largest migrant aid organizations.
In a 2-1 ruling issued on Monday, the three-judge panel of the 15th Court of Appeals reaffirmed a lower court’s ruling from last year. The 11-page ruling said the attorney general’s office had the “burden of proof to demonstrate that the benefits of forcing a pre-suit deposition outweigh the burdens to Catholic Charities.”
“Given Catholic Charities’ cooperation with the investigation, the documents it produced, and its provision of a sworn statement answering the (Office of the Attorney General’s) questions, the trial court was within its discretion to deny” Paxton’s request to question Sister Norma Pimentel, the leader of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.
The case is one of several in which the attorney general’s office has targeted groups that work with migrants across the state. The probes began after Abbott in December 2022 directed Paxton’s office to investigate “the role non-governmental organizations may have in planning and assisting illegal border crossings into Texas.”
[…]
In Texas, lawyers can question someone under oath for an investigation before a lawsuit is filed, but they need a judge’s approval to do so.
See here and here for the background. The opinion is readable but technical. It largely boils down to “the AG asserted powers for itself that aren’t written into state law, the plaintiffs complied with the requests that the AG does have the power to make, the district court made a reasonable ruling, nothing for us to do here, go file an actual lawsuit if you want to do more”. That’s about as good a result as I could have wanted.
The 15th Court of Appeals is the new statewide appellate court, with three justices appointed by Greg Abbott, created recently mostly to take cases away from the big urban appellate courts that have Democrats on them. That bodes reasonably well for the other charities that Paxton has been harassing, though the ruling here is tied to the specifics of this case more than to a legal principle, so the others may still have to run the gauntlet. And as noted, this case and the others are about Paxton trying to force a higher level of disclosure from these charities without having first filed a lawsuit against them. His office could simply file those lawsuits now. They would have to survive a motion to dismiss before he can get to discovery, which is his ultimate aim here, but it would be a massive pain for the charities, beyond what they’re already going through. So while this is a good ruling, it’s unlikely to be the end of the story.