The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday appealing the State Bar of Texas’s discipline of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top deputy for bringing the election lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania with Paxton over the election irregularities in four states in 2020, which was joined by 21 other states. The bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline filed lawsuits against Paxton and First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster in 2022 asking for sanctions over allegedly violating several broad, vague ethical rules increasingly used to target conservative attorneys.Â
The bar claimed that Paxton and Webster violated the ethical rule against making “false statements of material fact or law to a tribunal” when they alleged there were unregistered voters and other types of illegal votes, and that tabulators from Dominion Voting Systems switched votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. They were also accused of violating an ethical rule that prohibits conduct “involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation” and a third rule that prohibits bringing frivolous claims.
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