Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is weaponizing consumer protection laws against nonprofit organizations

Karen Loewy, a lawyer with Lambda Legal, which is representing PFLAG, said she remains baffled by the attorney general’s decision to use the state’s consumer protection law to investigate organizations like PFLAG, which provides resources to chapter support groups in the state.

“There's no consumer fraud happening here at PFLAG’s hands,” Loewy said.

Yet, she said, the attorney general appears to believe that he can send these demands to anyone his office thinks has information related to an investigation. In a court filing in response to PFLAG's lawsuit, Paxton’s office admitted it does not believe the nonprofit is violating the state’s consumer protection law, known as the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The attorney general, however, argued in the filing that it can demand records of anyone, “not just those suspected of a violation.”

”The way in which the AG’s office has argued this already shows that they think that their power is unlimited,” Loewy said.

How incredibly alarming. Paxton is and has always been a corrosive force working against justice, so these tactics of intimidation are only more of the same — however, the sheer arrogance and audacity to claim it is his right as an AG to access any private information he chooses, at whim, so long as it has even the most tenuous of connections to Texas, simply because he wills it so is hair-raising.

Well, this article was as informative as it was infuriating.

Cannot imagine why he wants PFLAG's records. Hmmm.

I despair of how many queer people will die due to the government failing to protect them from the violence and hatred of others.