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Ken Paxton
Watching Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton get his ass handed to him is always a good way to start the week, especially when it happens in epically karmic fashion. And so let us all enjoy this smackdown delivered by Judge Amit Mehta who sits on the US District Court in DC.
“What is the Texas AG doing in a federal court located in the East Coast liberal swamp?” you are wondering.
Well, it started back in November of 2023 when the non-profit news outlet Media Matters published a story by reporter Eric Hananoki showing ads for companies like Apple and Oracle next to explicitly Nazi content on Twitter. Elon Musk flipped his shit, accusing MMFA of a “fraudulent attack” and threatening to file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against it. He did indeed file a lawsuit, although it was less “thermonuclear” than “thermos full of chocolate milk that got lost in the trunk three months ago and somehow rolled out in the Texas heat.” There’s a pending motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, but Twitter did manage to get themselves in front of that reactionary loon Judge Reed O’Connor, so who even knows.
In the meantime, Republican AGs assembled to defend poor, innocent Elon’s sacred honor by using their offices to harass MMFA. Paxton sent a civil investigative demand, essentially a subpoena, to MMFA in DC, and MMFA moved to enjoin the subpoena, first in federal court in Maryland, where Hananoki lives, and than in DC. And that is how they all wound up in front of Judge Mehta, where Paxton responded that he could not be enjoined because the federal court in DC lacked personal jurisdiction over him.
The man does not lack for chutzpah! After attempting to drag Media Matters into Texas to punish it for saying mean things about Twitter, he complained that “The Texas Attorney General and his investigation do not have legally cognizable contacts with the District of Columbia.” In his telling, the case should be sent to Judge O’Connor in Fort Worth.
“Even by Media Matters’ telling, the overwhelming share of events giving rise to the CID involve Media Matters’ potentially false or misleading disparagement of X.com. And those allegations are the subject of X Corp.’s lawsuit against Media Matters in the Northern District of Texas,” Paxton argued. “To the extent this case is justiciable in any federal court, it belongs in that court with that related case.”
This logic was not compelling to Judge Mehta, who pointed out that the very act of hiring the process server in DC established minimum contacts with the district sufficient to trigger personal jurisdiction.
“First, the court finds that Defendant invoked the benefits and protections of the District’s laws when he ’caused’ service of the CID in the District of Columbia ‘through a professional process service,’” the court noted, adding that the AG shouldn’t have come bigfooting into the nation’s capital if he didn’t want to litigate there.
“Second, Defendant reasonably should have anticipated being hauled into court here because the CID established a future course of dealing with a D.C. resident,” Judge Mehta continued, noting that the Fifth Circuit had found personal jurisdiction over the New Jersey AG when he subpoenaed a Texas “ghost gun” manufacturer, and turnabout is fair play.
Hananoki and MMFA submitted supporting affidavits saying that the Texas AG’s menacing investigation had caused it to nix stories on Musk and Twitter, chilling their speech in violation of the First Amendment.
“His issuance of the CID had the effect of chilling Plaintiffs’ expressive activities
nationwide, which deprived D.C. residents access to Plaintiffs’ reporting,” Judge Mehta wrote, adding that Paxton made it even clearer that his goal was to punish MMFA’s speech — as opposed to protecting Texas residents — when he went on Newsmax and encouraged other state AGs to do the same.
The court granted the TRO and denied Paxton’s motion to dismiss. And since Missouri AG Andrew Bailey is seeking to enforce a subpoena which he himself described as “virtually identical,” it probably spells doom for that effort as well.
Too bad, so sad!
MMFA v. Paxton [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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