Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who spoke at a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C. just hours before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is still withholding his communications related to that trip, according to a national watchdog group seeking the records for over two years.
American Oversight filed its lawsuit in June 2022, arguing the Texas Attorney General's office and the Texas Governor's office hadn't released all the communications they should have included in response to requests for the state officials' emails and text messages. After a district court judge and the Third Court of Appeals ruled the state needed to provide the court with documents justifying their rationale in withholding records, Paxton took the matter to the Texas Supreme Court, which could weigh in next.
The outcome of the case could have broader implications for Texans' access to public records.
"The lawsuit here is about protecting the public's right to know about what the highest officials in their state are doing," Emma Lewis, an attorney at American Oversight, said.
Lewis said Paxton and Abbott's arguments against releasing more documents are contrary to the state's public records law, which says the people "do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know."
Tom Leatherbury, director of the First Amendment Clinic at the SMU Dedman School of Law, called it a "very dangerous precedent" for Paxton and Abbott to claim forms of immunity from the Texas Public Information Act.
"The argument that no court can compel the governor to comply with the Texas Public Information Act is antithetical to democracy really," Leatherbury said. "The attorney general's arguments are a little less broad, but still would cripple the operation of the Texas Public Information Act in many instances where now it's effective."