Texas Supreme Court dismisses State Bar lawsuit against assistant attorney general

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster that sought to take away his law license for engaging in “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” in a legal filing he and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton submitted regarding 2020 election results.

The ruling upholds an earlier one by a Williamson County district judge who decided that taking Webster’s license would violate the Texas Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine. The district court’s decision was reversed by the Eighth Court of Appeals in 2023 before the case went before the Texas Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Nathan Hecht and Justices John Phillip Devine, Jimmy Blacklock, Brett Busby, Jane Bland, and Rebeca Aispuru Huddle joined Justice Evan A. Young, who delivered the opinion. Justices Jeff Boyd and Debra Lehrmann dissented.

Typically, the court where a lawsuit is filed is tasked with reviewing the accuracy of statements and issuing any rebuke of the attorneys involved, not courts that are not associated with a case, Young wrote.

The lawsuit filed by Paxton and Webster sought to contest the 2020 presidential election results in four key battleground states that President Joe Biden won — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The lawsuit argued those states implemented pandemic-related changes to election procedures that were illegal, casting election results into question.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in December 2020, days after it was filed. A disciplinary committee for the State Bar of Texas then took what was seen as an extraordinary move by suing Paxton and Webster over their election litigation.

Tuesday’s ruling did not affect Paxton’s case.

“After four years of lawfare and political retaliation, the Texas Supreme Court has ended this witch hunt against the leadership of my office,” Paxton said in a statement released Tuesday. “The Texas State Bar attempted to punish us for fighting to secure our national elections but we did not and will not ever back down from doing what is right.”

Webster echoed Paxton’s statement in the same press release, saying President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in November would allow them to return the work of “making Texas and America great again without distraction.”

Lowell Brown, associate deputy director for the State Bar, said the bar had no comment on the decision.

“The Commission for Lawyer Discipline has not had a chance to meet and to discuss the potential implications of the decision with the Chief Disciplinary Counsel,” Brown wrote in an email.

Disclosure: The State Bar of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.