The attorney general repeatedly uses laws meant to protect against fraudulent or deceptive practices to target hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and LGBTQ+ groups.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton , right, is using consumer protection laws to target organizations like Annunciation House, run by Ruben Garcia, left, whose work conflicts with Paxton’s political views.Photo illustration by ProPublica. Source photos: Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune, Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune
“Is this a warrant?” Garcia recalls asking the group, which included an assistant attorney general and a law enforcement officer from the state agency. An analysis by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune shows that in the past two years, Paxton has used consumer protection law more than a dozen times to investigate a range of entities for activities like offering shelter to immigrants, providing health care to transgender teens or trying to foster a diverse workplace.
Two attorneys representing nonprofits that Paxton recently targeted said they believe he launched the investigations simply to harass their clients and to cause a chilling effect among organizations doing similar work. Both said the attorney general’s demands violate the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech, association and religion, and the Fourth Amendment, which offers protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Paxton’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. In response, the attorney general’s office argued in court documents that the nonprofit had forfeited its right to operate and publicly accused it of acting as a stash house for immigrants he alleges are in the country illegally.
In March, an El Paso state district judge temporarily blocked the attorney general’s efforts to obtain Annunciation House’s records and said the state must go through the court system to continue the investigation. “There is a real and credible concern that the attempt to prevent Annunciation House from conducting business in Texas was predetermined,” the judge wrote in his order.
As the Annunciation House case progresses through the courts, Paxton has continued his public attacks on the nonprofit. On May 8, Paxton announced in a press release that he had filed a court injunction to stop what he called Annunciation House’s “systemic criminal conduct.” He then issued a warning to other nonprofits that assist immigrants, saying that those that are “complicit in Joe Biden’s illegal immigration catastrophe and think they are above the law should consider themselves on notice.
Initially, attorneys general focused consumer protection investigations in their own states. By the 1980s, however, the scope of the investigations began to change as the attorneys general offices started to work across state lines to target large industries. A 2014 Supreme Court decision that lifted limits on individual campaign contributions raised the stakes of attorneys general campaigns and created “a funnel for dark money to flow into every AG race,” Tierney said.
Texas was not among those states when, in August 2021, then-state Rep. Matt Krause, a Republican who the same year launched an investigation into school library books that dealt with topics like sexuality and race, wrote to Paxton asking for an opinion on whether gender-affirming care for children amounted to child abuse. In February 2022, Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion that said it did.
Dell Children’s did not respond to an interview request. Texas Children’s Hospital declined to comment for this story. PFLAG sued Paxton’s office in February after the attorney general demanded its records. In court filings, Paxton alleged that the nonprofit had information about medical providers in the state that may have been committing insurance fraud. The attorney general accused health care professionals of providing gender-affirming care but disguising it as treatment for an endocrine disorder.
On Friday, Annunciation House’s lawyers filed a motion to throw out the attorney general’s case. Aside from arguing that Paxton’s claims about the organization are unfounded, the nonprofit said in the legal filings that the probe has caused harm that is “not only imminent, it is ongoing.”
Texas Politics Texas Policy Texas Government State Government Immigration Attorney General's Office Ken Paxton El Paso El Paso County
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