Ken Paxton has even used the laws to investigate out-of-state organizations connected to gender-affirming care.
The men knocked on the door of a two-story, red-brick building in downtown El Paso one chilly morning in February. When a volunteer answered, they handed her a document they said gave them the right to go inside and review records kept by Annunciation House, a nonprofit that for decades has served immigrants and refugees seeking shelter.
It wasn’t. Still, the letter the men presented stated that the attorney general’s office had the power to immediately enter the building without one.
Paxton’s office did not respond to requests for comment or to detailed questions. It also did not reply to a request to speak with the Consumer Protection Division’s chief. In the Annunciation House case, the attorney general’s office went even further by showing up at the nonprofit’s door and demanding to immediately review documents rather than sending its requests for records by mail and giving organizations weeks to respond, as it often has in other casesPaxton’s office then denied the nonprofit’s request for additional time to determine what information it was legally required to turn over, prompting Annunciation House to sue.
Even when Paxton doesn’t get speedy access to the documents he wants, he often publicizes these typically confidential cases, putting out news releases that draw headlines and build support among his base of hard-line conservatives. “The people that the laws were designed for were working-class people who were getting ripped off when they bought a used car,” said Tierney, who directs the attorney general clinic at Harvard Law School. While many attorneys general still do that work, consumer protection laws are also increasingly “being used to obviously move social agendas.”
Perhaps the most notable example is the decision by all 50 state attorneys general to sue tobacco companies in the 1990s. They successfully argued the industry misled consumers about the dangers of cigarettes and other tobacco products and intentionally marketed them to children. The lawsuits resulted in billions of dollars in settlement money. More recently, attorneys general across the country pursued similar multistate suits against the opioid industry and pharmaceutical supply chain.
“The machine is up and running,” Tierney said, “and will continue to run unless someone figures out how to stop it.”Although Paxton has used consumer protection law to investigate a wide range of organizations with which he disagrees politically, he has perhaps most aggressively pursued those that provide or support gender-affirming care for minors.
Days later, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who authorized such treatment for their children, a move that spurred bothAs Abbott ordered the state agency to go after parents, Paxton began launching investigations into organizations that provide or support gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
In the months that followed, Paxton went even further. He began to investigate organizations outside of Texas for their connections to gender-affirming care: Seattle Children’s Hospital in Washington state; QueerMed, a telehealth clinic based in Georgia; and PFLAG Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based national nonprofit that supports LGBTQ+ people and their families.
A Travis County district court judge issued an injunction in March that temporarily blocked the state’s access to the records. In her ruling, she wrote that failing to stop the attorney general from getting these records could result in PFLAG and its members suffering harm, including limitations on their First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights. Paxton appealed her ruling.
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