A state district court judge in San Antonio dismissed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's request to block a plan from the state's biggest counties to mail voter registration forms to residents ahead of the November election.
Paxton's complaint came after county commissioners approved a plan on Sept. 3 to mail roughly 210,000 applications through a contract with an outside vendor.
The Attorney General, a Republican, argued that it was illegal for the county to arrange for the unsolicited, mass mailing of voter registration applications. He warned of legal action if Bexar County moved forward with its plan to work with the vendor, Civic Government Solutions, and filed a lawsuit the next day.
Judge Antonia Arteaga tossed out the case on Monday after Bexar County attorneys said there was no reason for the court to issue an injunction because the forms were mailed last week. Arteaga explained that Paxton's request was moot.
"The target of the mailing— qualified individuals who recently moved to or within Bexar County— have received those forms, and perhaps have already returned them," said Bexar County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Robert W. Piatt III.
In a letter to county officials, the GOP leader argued that the outreach proposal was "particularly troubling this election cycle" because of the uptick in illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden, whose policies he said have "saddled Texas" with "ballooning noncitizen populations."
He has also repeatedly, without evidence, accused Democrats of adopting more liberal immigration policies to draw on noncitizen votes to win elections. For instance, he falsely told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck in August that Democrats' plan was to "tell the cartels, 'get people here as fast as possible, as many as possible.'"
But Civic Government Solutions' chief executive, Jeremy Smith, said that the outreach efforts would be strictly nonpartisan— as required by the contract— and pose little risk of registering non citizens.
Likewise, those on the initiative's side shook off the Attorney General's threats, feeling confident they stood on solid legal ground.
"Our position from the very beginning was that the commissioners had every right to do what they did, and we are very pleased with the judge's ruling today," Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales told reporters after Monday's hearing, CNN reports.
The lawsuit is part of an ongoing battle between the state's Republican leaders and Texas' largest counties, which are run by Democrats, over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote, according to The Texas Tribune.
This isn't the first time Paxton has tried to undermine voting efforts.
In fact, his office launched an election integrity unit in 2018, investigating allegations of voter fraud, but yielding few convictions. Just recently he sued Travis County, which includes Austin, to block an effort to register more voters before November, just like in Bexar.
He also recently conducted a series of raids as part of an investigation into alleged vote harvesting in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties, a move the League of United Latin American Citizens cataloged as an effort to "suppress the Latino vote through intimidation."
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