From the inbox:
Still a crook any way you look
The newly created 15th Court of Appeals has upheld a temporary injunction blocking Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to force local district attorneys to give him sweeping access to their prosecutorial data, marking the second time a court has ruled that Paxton lacks the authority to impose the mandate.
The three Greg Abbott-appointed justices agreed that Paxton exceeded his legal authority and left in place an injunction preventing enforcement of the rule, which would have allowed the Attorney General’s Office to demand entire case files, including notes, correspondence, and confidential materials, even in cases that are not being prosecuted.
The rule targeted counties with more than 400,000 residents, singling out just a handful of large, urban counties across Texas, and threatened district attorneys with removal from office if they failed to comply.
“This is another clear victory for Harris County and for local governments across Texas,” said Harris County Attorney Christian D. Menefee. “Once again, a court has confirmed that Ken Paxton does not have the authority to carry out this plan to look over the shoulder of locally elected officials. State officials like Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott regularly overstep their bounds, and Harris County will continue to fight back every time it does.”
Paxton’s rule would have required district attorneys to produce massive amounts of data that would require moving staff time, resources, and taxpayer dollars away from public safety and toward political oversight by the Attorney General’s Office.
“Today, justice prevailed over political interference. I commend County Attorney Menefee and his team for standing firm and successfully defending Harris County against unlawful state intrusion,” said Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare. “This decisive victory protects the independence of our prosecutors and ensures they can remain focused on what matters most: holding violent criminals accountable and keeping our community safe.”
Jon Fombonne, First Assistant Harris County Attorney, said Paxton’s legal argument was rejected because it relies on authority that simply does not exist.
“Ken Paxton tried to stretch a decades-old statute to give himself sweeping oversight powers that the law does not allow,” Fombonne said. “District attorneys across Texas are independently elected and have their own prosecutorial authority. The state cannot sidestep that independence through an administrative rule, and the court rightly shut this down.”
This ruling follows an earlier district court decision reaching the same conclusion, reinforcing that Paxton’s effort to expand his authority through rulemaking is unlawful.
See here and here for the background. The DMN adds some more details.
The judicial panel effectively sided with Democratic Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot and fellow urban prosecutors who argued the Paxton-imposed reporting requirements exceeded his statutory authority.
The ruling, however, doesn’t end the legal fight. The case now returns to the Travis County district court that issued a temporary injunction in May preventing Paxton from requiring urban-area prosecutors to hand over sensitive case information and submit regular reports to him.
“While this ruling is only preliminary, it shows progress in the right direction,” Creuzot said in a statement late Tuesday. “Yet another court has ruled that Attorney General Paxton overstepped his authority by proposing to enforce these rules with the likelihood of costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”
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In its 14-page opinion, the panel said Paxton, a Republican from McKinney, didn’t have the authority to force local district attorneys to report to his office on certain matters.
“Administrative rulemaking is a lawmaking power that the Legislature delegates to agencies to carry out legislative purposes,” the justices wrote. “Although the Attorney General is a constitutionally created officer…the Office of the Attorney General is part of the executive branch and therefore has rulemaking authority only if the Legislature grants it such authority.”
The court battle between Paxton and district attorneys in counties consisting of more than 400,000 residents began earlier this year after the attorney general proposed expansive new rules that require chief prosecutors in the state’s most populous areas to submit regular reports and hand over investigative files for cases involving indicted police officers, poll watchers and defendants claiming they acted in self-defense.
If allowed, the mandate would have given the attorney general unprecedented access to prosecutorial decisions and policies.
Paxton said the reporting requirements would rein in what he called “rogue” DAs: Democratic prosecutors who refused to take on cases involving certain crimes. The attorney general, for instance, has repeatedly criticized Creuzot for not pursuing first-time, low-level marijuana cases and pledging not to prosecute families of children receiving gender-affirming medical care, as well as people who seek, provide or support abortions.
“The reporting rules, adopted by the Attorney General in early 2025, would have required prosecutors in large counties to submit extensive data, internal policies, correspondence, and case files, including confidential victim and witness information such as child abuse files and pornography, among other sensitive materials,” Creuzot wrote in his statement. “Failure to comply could have unlawfully exposed elected prosecutors to removal from office.”
Among the 13 counties included in the mandate were Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton.
Creuzot and two other Democratic district attorneys filed a lawsuit in May challenging the constitutionality of the new rules. The group later was joined by several other chief prosecutors targeted by the new rules.
The district attorneys argued the rules overextended Paxton’s authority and put an unnecessary burden on them. They also claimed the requirements violated the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches and were a waste of taxpayer money and resources.
In June, a Travis County district judge issued a temporary injunction preventing Paxton from enforcing the proposed new administrative rules. Paxton then appealed to the 15th Court of Appeals. The temporary injunction issued in June will remain in place until the case returns to the 459th District Court in Travis County for further proceedings.
There were originally two lawsuits, involving five counties and their DAs, which I believe were combined. The majority opinion listed seven plaintiffs, from Travis, El Paso, Dallas, Bexar, Harris, Fort Bend, and Williamson counties. It upholds the lower court’s restraining order but limits it to only these plaintiffs, which is may be more symbolic than substantive unless those other six have already complied. They now have a clear path to avoiding that if they want to. The Chief Justice added a concurring opinion that seems to have taken an even stricter view of the law that Paxton used to justify his demands. So while the matter still needs to be fully heard and Paxton can still appeal the restraining order to the Supreme Court, it’s a strong result. Good ruling to wrap the year on. The Trib has more.