The Texas Supreme Court has officially ended its efforts to discipline Attorney General Ken Paxton over his past attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The legal actions against the Texas AG stemmed from Paxton’s efforts in late 2020 to challenge the presidential election results, a move that attracted national attention from the media and America’s higher courts alike. Paxton first filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the election results in four battleground states. However, The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rejected the case and took action against Paxton’s office for prodding about the integrity of the election.
The Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline had previously aimed to punish Paxton for allegedly making “false claims” to the U.S. Supreme Court about ballots in specific key swing states back in 2020. Afterward, the Office of the Attorney General petitioned the Texas Supreme Court to review the State Bar’s efforts to impose sanctions on Paxton and other OAG officials, as previously reported by DX.
“After Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the State of Texas in response to good-faith concerns of unconstitutional conduct by States during the 2020 presidential election, the State Bar of Texas retaliated by attempting to sanction Attorney General Paxton and First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster for filing that lawsuit, and it initiated disciplinary actions against them to obtain that result,” Paxton’s office said in a prior news release.
In April 2024, 17 state attorneys general from across the country submitted a brief to the Texas Supreme Court expressing their support for Paxton and Webster.
In January 2025, the Commission for Lawyer Discipline dropped its complaint against Paxton. The Texas Supreme Court followed suit, declaring the legal action moot in a ruling issued last week. The court also addressed another appeal on the case, choosing to vacate its prior opinion and dismiss the case altogether, according to a report from KRLD 1080 NewsRadio.
This latest ruling by the Texas Supreme Court essentially concludes the disciplinary proceedings against Paxton, closing the book on one of the most contentious legal battles of his tenure as the state’s AG. The court’s decision provides him with another legal win under his belt, allowing him to focus on his role as the state’s legal head without further threat of discipline related to his 2020 election challenges.
In 2024, Paxton called the pushback an “unconstitutional violation of the Texas Constitution’s Separation of Powers Clause.”
Now that President Trump is back in office, it seems that the battle over the integrity of the 2020 presidential election results may be coming to a close for Paxton and other political leaders across America.