{"id":247413,"date":"2026-04-13T11:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/247413\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T11:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:12:11","slug":"gop-attorney-general-hopefuls-take-aim-at-supreme-court-rulings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/247413\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP attorney general hopefuls take aim at Supreme Court rulings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1975, Texas passed a law allowing school districts to exclude undocumented students from free public school. When a district in Tyler enacted such a policy, a group of families sued. <\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that Texas\u2019 law was unconstitutional and children had a right to public education, regardless of their citizenship status. <\/p>\n

Five decades later, at a candidate forum in the same city that gave rise to that landmark ruling, the Republican candidates for Texas attorney general laid out their plans to use the agency to overturn it. <\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy said it was one of his \u201cforemost priorities of running for attorney general.\u201d Sen. Mayes Middleton said it was a \u201cterrible decision\u201d that could be overturned if a case was brought to the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court. <\/p>\n

More than just campaign trail grandstanding, these promises from both candidates to use the agency to try to overturn decades-old Supreme Court precedent offer a glimpse at how Texas\u2019 next attorney general could go even further than outgoing incumbent Ken Paxton in channeling the office\u2019s powers toward pursuit of the conservative legal movement\u2019s white whales. <\/p>\n

Empowered by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court\u2019s current favorable makeup, conservatives are itching to go after other long-standing rulings such as those allowing gay marriage, keeping religion out of government and giving the feds authority over the states. <\/p>\n

In touting their willingness to bring these cases, Roy and Middleton are making it clear they intend to push the office\u2019s partisan agenda even further than Paxton, said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe notion that the attorney general of any one state, even Texas, should be leading the charge in defining what the Constitution means on a nationwide basis, is, to me, the epitome of hubris,\u201d Vladeck said. \u201cOne might even say it\u2019s Texas-sized hubris.\u201d <\/p>\n

Roy and Middleton, who are facing off in a May 26 runoff, did not respond to requests for comments. But at the campaign forum in Tyler, Roy said he had a laundry list of cases he\u2019d like to challenge if elected as attorney general.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could sit here all night talking about cases that Texas ought to be challenging,\u201d Roy said. \u201cWe have to be vigilant in challenges at every single turn.\u201d <\/p>\n

A more politicized AG\u2019s office<\/p>\n

Thirty years ago, most state attorney general offices, including Texas\u2019, were bureaucratic backwaters that mostly handled child support enforcement and lawsuits against state agencies. This began to change in the 1990s, when states teamed up to bring massive consumer protection lawsuits against the big tobacco companies on behalf of their citizens. Suddenly, attorneys general were on the front lines of pushing public policy through the courts. <\/p>\n

The tobacco litigation was bipartisan, as was most of the proactive state legal action \u2014 in the beginning. That changed during the Obama administration, when red states, led by then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, began suing to stop executive orders related to the environment and immigration. They were empowered by a 2007 Supreme Court ruling giving states \u201cspecial solicitude\u201d to bring lawsuits against the federal government on behalf of their constituents.<\/p>\n

Blue states took up the mantle during the first Trump presidency. When Joe Biden was elected in 2021, Paxton vowed to use the full force of his agency against the president\u2019s agenda. In the end, Texas sued the Biden administration more than 100 times, over everything from abortion policy to COVID vaccines. Since Trump returned to office, Paxton has turned his attention to suing nonprofits, private companies and local governments over a wide range of culture war issues. <\/p>\n

Roy and Middleton have both vowed to continue that new tradition of partisan litigation. Roy, who worked under Paxton at the agency a decade ago, proudly touts his role in suing the Obama administration and trying to block the implementation of the Supreme Court\u2019s gay marriage ruling. Middleton, one of the most conservative members of the Legislature, is running on his record of pushing pro-religion and anti-LGBTQ bills \u2014 one of which is already testing decades-old legal precedent. <\/p>\n

Last session, Middleton helped carry a bill to require public schools to hang the 10 Commandments in classrooms, which a judge blocked from taking effect, citing a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that found such a requirement to be unconstitutional. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed the law to go forward while it considers arguments against it. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to defeat these atheist precedents that have stopped prayer in school, that have stopped children from going to Christian schools, and frankly, that have stopped what made our country great, which is our faith,\u201d Middleton said at the Tyler campaign forum, citing what he called the \u201cfalse doctrine of separation of church and state.\u201d<\/p>\n

If elected attorney general, Middleton would be tasked with defending lawsuits like these \u2014 and potentially seeking out other legal avenues to advance the religious freedom agenda. Vladeck said he\u2019s skeptical that this Supreme Court is as eager to reverse itself on those issues as conservatives hope, though he noted \u201cthings can change quickly.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cBut the larger point is, why would a single state attorney general consider themselves in a position to lead the charge on that?\u201d he said. \u201cAttorneys general are tasked with enforcing state law, not charging into reinterpreting the meaning of the federal Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roy has been more explicit about his desire to overturn precedent, including Wickard v. Filburn, a Great Depression-era case that gave the federal government wide-ranging authority over any commerce that could potentially cross state lines. Several conservative legal groups, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Roy once worked, have said in recent lawsuits that the ruling has led to a system that unconstitutionally takes power away from the states. While a federal judge rejected TPPF\u2019s suit, two other federal judges green-lit similar challenges, setting up a potential opportunity for higher courts to weigh in. <\/p>\n

Roy has also talked about wanting to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 same-sex marriage ruling. \u201cThere\u2019s a war raging against our souls as Texans, and those things need to be fought,\u201d he said at the campaign forum. <\/p>\n

In most cases, the attorney general would have to wait for the Legislature to pass a law that violates precedent, and hope that the state gets sued to try to bring a case to the Supreme Court. But the current attorney general has found ways to sidestep that process. After legislators declined to take up Middleton\u2019s bill prohibiting undocumented college students from getting in-state tuition at state colleges and universities, Paxton brokered a deal with the Trump Department of Justice to overturn the law through the courts. <\/p>\n

The next attorney general could take a similar tack, for example, if there is not enough political will in the Legislature to pass a law taking aim at public education access for undocumented students. <\/p>\n

After senior White House adviser Stephen Miller recently pressed Texas GOP lawmakers on why they hadn\u2019t already challenged the Plyler ruling, one Republican told the Tribune that the \u201cmainstream of the Republican caucus\u201d wasn\u2019t interested in challenging Plyler.<\/p>\n

But the in-state tuition case, Vladeck said, demonstrates the potential for an attorney general to work around the usual systems to advance their political goals. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is, in some respects, the inevitable consequence of the politicization,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a world in which state attorneys general view themselves as responsible not just for the laws of their state but for some broader front-line advocacy role, being so blatant about their goals is unsurprising, if a bit troubling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Texas Public Policy Foundation 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\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,4479,29,28,14888,6473],"class_list":["post-247413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-attorney-general","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-supreme-court","tag-well-a-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}