Texas attorney general Paxton must face attorney ethics case, appeals court rules
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton must face an attorney misconduct lawsuit by state regulators over a case he brought challenging the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, a Texas appeals court ruled on Thursday.
The Dallas-based Fifth District Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling upheld a lower court decision that said Paxton as the head of the state attorney general’s office was not beyond the reach of professional conduct rules for lawyers in the state.
The court concluded that the ethics case against Paxton concerned his “individual” capacity as a licensed attorney.
“The Disciplinary Rules apply to all lawyers in Texas, specifically including government lawyers such as the attorney general,” Justice Erin Nowell wrote for the majority. Nowell added: “Subjecting Paxton to disciplinary proceedings does not violate separation of powers; immunizing him does.”
Paxton has denied any wrongdoing and said the misconduct claims against him should be dismissed.
Texas state attorney regulators accused Paxton, a Republican, of making “dishonest” statements in a case he filed in 2020 at the U.S. Supreme Court supporting Donald Trump’s challenge to his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The Texas bar declined to comment on Friday. The Texas attorney general’s office said it would appeal to the Texas Supreme Court and would defeat what it called the state bar's efforts at "partisan political revenge."
In a dissent, Justice Emily Miskel said the case against Paxton was impermissibly “based on an executive officer’s discretionary performance of the powers assigned exclusively to him.”
The Texas Supreme Court is already is weighing whether to take up an attorney ethics case involving his top deputy, Brent Webster, who also was accused of misconduct for his work on the election case.
A Texas appeals court in July revived the bar’s misconduct case against Webster after a lower court had dismissed the case.
The Eighth Court of Appeals in El Paso in its ruling said the lower court judge wrongly concluded that Webster's conduct in office was beyond the reach of the lawyer discipline commission.
At the Supreme Court, Republican-led state attorneys general from Florida, Missouri, Indiana and 15 other states have backed Webster in a friend-of-the-court filing.
They said the state bar and the courts were not appropriate venues for what they called “ultimately a political fight.”
The case is Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr v. Commission for Lawyer Discipline, Court of Appeals, Fifth District of Texas at Dallas, No. 05-23-00128-CV.
For Paxton: Lanora Pettit of Texas attorney general’s office
For Commission: Michael Graham of state bar of Texas office of disciplinary counsel
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