Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and U.S. Senate candidate, waves to supporters as he takes the stage during a primary runoff election night watch party in Plano, Tuesday, May 26, 2026.
The Dallas Morning News/Hearst N/The Dallas Morning News via Gett
It wouldn’t be Pride Month without a pool party, and it wouldn’t be a day ending in Y if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton didn’t sue something.
On Monday, the first day of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Paxton announced that he was suing the City of Denton and its officials over a pride event at the city-owned Civic Center Pool. Paxton’s lawsuit, filed on May 28, claims that the planned June 7 “Big Gay Swim Day” event and the City of Denton are breaking Texas’ newly passed bathroom bill by advertising that the event would have gender neutral changing rooms.
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Paxton, in his suit, said that the event being open to all ages would potentially subject children to “mixed sex changing rooms” in violation of Texas Senate Bill 8, also known as the Texas Women’s Privacy Act. The bill passed last legislative session requires public bathrooms owned by local governments to be restricted to a person’s sex assigned at birth. It also empowers the attorney general to sue and potentially fine local governments that fail to restrict transgender people’s access to the bathrooms and changing rooms they own.
There is no evidence that trans-inclusive bathroom policies have opened women and children up to violence, and data show that trans people are far more likely to be harassed or attacked in public bathrooms. As with many of his suits and statements, Paxton repeatedly brings up the spectre of grown men invading women’s bathrooms.
“Cities cannot disregard Texas law by allowing men to change with young kids in spaces designated for women,” Paxton’s office said. “The City of Denton had an opportunity to prevent this violation and chose to do nothing. That dereliction of duty will not stand, and I will ensure that Texas cities follow our state’s laws to protect women and children from men invading their spaces.”
A Starbucks employee holds up a fan displaying the word pride during The Austin Pride Foundation’s Pride Parade on August 23, 2025, in Austin, TX.
Icon Sportswire/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Paxton’s suit makes several mentions of the “Big Gay Swim Day” event, advertising that there will be gender neutral changing spaces available. But Pridenton and OUTReach, the North Texas nonprofits organizing the event, said in a statement on social media that they had already remedied any potential violations of SB 8, the state law, with the City of Denton.
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“On May 21, city staff informed Pridenton that we were not permitted to have all-gender bathrooms at city facilities as a result of SB8,” the groups said in a joint statement. “We removed this language from all posts and advertisements about this year’s events.”
Kayla Herrod, the interim director of marketing and communications for the city, told the Denton Record Chronicle that the Big Gay Swim Day event was not sponsored by the City of Denton and that anyone is able to rent out Civic Center Pool for private events after it closes to the public. Herrod also corroborated that the city had already been in communication with Pridenton and OUTReach before Paxton’s suit.
“Staff proactively took all necessary measures to ensure full compliance with state law in advance of Pridenton’s rental of the Civic Center Pool on June 7, including informing the organizers that certain elements of their advertising conflicted with state law and advising them of the requirement to comply,” Herrod told the Denton Record Chronicle.
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Under SB 8, which passed last legislative session after a decade of failed attempts to enact an anti-trans bathroom bill in Texas, the only gender-neutral bathrooms and changing spaces allowed in government-owned buildings are those that are single-stall. That precludes governments from converting existing male and female bathrooms into all-gender bathrooms, an issue that came up at the University of Houston.
Before the lawsuit arose, Pridenton and OUTReach had posted on Instagram last week that the Big Gay Swim Day had been getting “unwanted attention” from North Texas anti-LGBTQ groups, and that they would not be posting a public RSVP link to the event as a result. On Monday, both groups called Paxton’s lawsuit “frivolous” and “a waste of taxpayers’ time and money.”
“As a community, we wholeheartedly condemn Paxton’s pervasive use of transphobic, dehumanizing, and false rhetoric in this attack on our community,” the groups wrote in a statement.
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Paxton’s suit over the Big Gay Swim Day event is the latest attack against pride events during LGBTQ+ Pride Month in recent years. Last June, several Texas pride events were harassed and forced to cancel their events or move locations. In October, Katy Pride’s event at the Typhoon Texas Waterpark in Katy was forced to move after harassment from a local school board candidate led to the waterpark dropping the pride event. As with other Texas Republicans, Paxton has used anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and high-profile lawsuits to further his career and endear himself to the state’s Republican base. Now, he’s using that playbook in his run for U.S. Senate.