Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues Austin Over $400K Abortion Travel Assistance

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the city of Austin over a fund that helped residents pay for travel to get abortions in other states.

This marked Paxton's second lawsuit on the city, after the city's authorities set aside $400,000 in the 2024-2025 budget to help residents with travel expenses, like airfare, gas, hotels, child care, and food, when traveling out-of-state for an abortion after Texas banned almost all abortions in the summer of 2022.

Apart from Austin, cities such as San Antonio have also passed similar funds, Texas Tribune reported.

In late August, former Austin City Council member Don Zimmerman filed a lawsuit, saying the city shouldn't use taxpayer money to support something illegal in Texas. Paxton's lawsuit was different from Zimmerman's case.

In Paxton's lawsuit, he claimed that this part of the budget broke the Texas Constitution's gifts clause, and argued that giving this money to people doesn't serve a "legitimate public purpose."

"No city in Texas has the authority to spend taxpayer money in this manner," Paxton said, Texas Tribune reported. "In this case, the City of Austin is illegally seeking to use public funding to support travel expenses for out-of-state abortions. The Texas Constitution prohibits governmental entities from doing so."

A spokesperson for Austin noted that the city has dealt with this issue in court before and will respond to the recent lawsuit in the proper legal way. Despite Zimmerman's lawsuit, the city council had still moved forward and passed the budget with the provision included.

City Council member Vanessa Fuentes explained that the fund was an important resource. In 2019, Austin became the second city in the United States, and the first in the south, to provide financial support for people seeking abortion care.

She expressed pride in the city's continued support for reproductive health care, especially as Texas faced one of the strictest abortion bans in the country.

Paxton claimed in legal filings that these groups were breaking state law, but a federal judge ruled last year that they were likely protected from prosecution. Even with that legal protection, these groups were struggling to meet the high demand.

City funds, like the one Austin created, also helped reduce the pressure on nonprofits by supporting more people who need to travel out of state for abortions.