Top Lawyer In Texas Doesn’t Understand Court Rulings, Celebrates Obvious SCOTUS Loss As A Win

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is an utter asshat. Not only is he the chosen defender of litigation over unconstitutional laws passed by an equally idiotic legislature, but he’s also the man behind plenty of Texas government action meant to make things worse for plenty of Texas residents.

On top of that, Ken Paxton has been indicted for committing securities fraud and recently agreed to pay $300,000 in restitution to avoid a criminal trial. The man who is the voice of the law in Texas not only doesn’t understand the Constitution but he seemingly can’t wrap his mind around the normal flow of litigation through the federal judicial system. On top of that, he can’t seem to stop violating laws himself, even though his position is at the top of the state’s “law and order” organizational chart.

But once you’ve decided “performative” is preferable to “competent,” all sorts of stupid things start happening. While AG Paxton continues to defend bad laws written by worse legislators, he’s also charged with fielding lawsuits filed by unhappy Texas residents who don’t feel their state government has any right to destroy their land without providing some compensation in return.

A civil rights lawsuit filed by two Texas residents whose land was destroyed thanks to government incompetence have sued the state. AG Paxton tried to have it both ways with these suits, as Matt Stringer explains for The Texan:

The case began when the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) built a dam on Interstate 10 near DeVillier’s fifth-generation family farm at Winnie, Texas, causing it to flood. The water destroyed his home, orchard, and livestock, prompting him to seek just compensation from the state.

DeVillier filed the lawsuit in state district court seeking compensation under both the Texas Constitution and the “Takings Clause” contained in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

Pointing to DeVillier’s neighbors who were also suing, the Office of the Texas Attorney General (OAG) asked the case to be removed to federal district court in the U.S. Southern District of Texas in order to better accommodate the plaintiffs. Once in federal court, Texas moved to dismiss the case, claiming the plaintiffs couldn’t sue the state in federal court directly under the Fifth Amendment.

Under the 11th Amendment, citizens may not sue state governments in federal court unless the state says they may, or a “cause of action” law is passed waiving the state’s sovereign immunity.

The stated reason for moving the lawsuits from state court to federal court was to make things “simpler” for the plaintiffs suing the state. The real reason was to convert the state cases to federal lawsuits for the sole purpose of dodging the claims by arguing the litigants (whose cases were moved without their approval) could not pursue these lawsuits in federal court.

Heads, Paxton wins. Tails, the plaintiffs lose. And it actually went that way for a little bit. The district court said the state waived its sovereign immunity against the suits by moving them to a federal court. This effort made the Fifth Amendment “self-executing,” which meant the plaintiffs could move forward with their lawsuits in the federal court.

Paxton appealed this decision. The Fifth Circuit Appeals Court (which is routinely awful when it comes to protecting the rights of circuit residents) reversed that decision, holding that the Fifth Amendment was not self-executing and ordering the lawsuits be returned to the state court from whence they had originated.

That obviously wouldn’t work for Paxton. A return to state court meant the state would continue to have to face these claims without the shield of sovereign immunity, which only would apply if the lawsuits were pursued in federal court.

So, Paxton appealed again, asking the Supreme Court to take a look at the lawsuits and make a call on the issue since the district court and Appeals Court had come to different conclusions… neither of which worked out in the state’s favor.

The Supreme Court took a look at the Fifth Circuit decision and vacated it. By doing so, it created a path for the plaintiffs to continue suing the state over constitutional violations, undoing Paxton’s attempt to scuttle the case by invoking sovereign immunity.

Somehow, AG Paxton decided this reversal — which allowed the lawsuits to continue in federal court — was somehow a win for him and his office. He went right to XTwitter to gloat, because that’s the platform of choice for idiots like Paxton who like to shout things into blue-checked echo chambers whenever possible.

Paxton bleated (I believe that’s the technical term for X posts?) this in response to the unanimous 9-0 shutout at the Supreme Court:

WIN: Today we secured a unanimous 9-0 win at the U.S. Supreme Court in a case protecting the ability of Texas to handle compensation disputes under State law for any allegedly taken property. 

For as long as Texas has been Texas, it has recognized that property rights are crucial to a free society. Under the U.S. Constitution, such claims should be pursued under state law unless Congress has said otherwise. I’m pleased the Supreme Court agreed with us unanimously that citizens should sue under Texas law.

Paxton is wrong. Patrick Jaicomo — a litigator for the Institute for Justice who represented the plaintiffs in this case — was one of the first to point out Paxton’s stupidity. Plenty of other people capable of comprehending court rulings pointed out this error as well, forcing Elon Musk’s Internet Hate Machine to append a clarification to AG Paxton’s misrepresentation of the SCOTUS decision. This “Community Note” was quickly attached to Paxton’s post.

Texas did not win. Texas asked the Court to affirm the 5th Circuit’s ruling. The Court instead vacated the 5th Circuit’s ruling.

Rather than taking the L and receding into the background to wait for some new debacle to overtake the X zeitgeist, Paxton doubled down, issuing a “correction” to the Community Note that, again, claimed the loss he had taken was actually a win.

By doing this, Paxton secured an ultra-rare double Community Note, extending his original tweet to include two sets of corrections to his mis-portrayal of the Supreme Court decision:

This would be embarrassing enough if it was just some person incorrectly informing XTwitter about the outcome of a legal case. But this is the state’s top lawyer — the man who is given the responsibility of representing the state in court, as well as overseeing a host of prosecutors handling criminal cases. And all this shows is Paxton is so desperate for good news he will willfully misunderstand a clear-cut (and unanimous!) Supreme Court decision so he can lob a fact-free assessment into his favorite echo chamber like chum tossed to particularly stupid sharks.

He’s been an embarrassment for years. This very public blowout makes it clear he’ll be an embarrassment for years to come if Texas voters continue to allow him to hold this office.