Boo.
Ken Paxton
The state attorney general is on the verge of having new powers to influence cases on school finance and legislative redistricting, as part of the GOP’s latest efforts to diminish Democratic challenges to their policies.
The House on Monday voted 91-49 to give preliminary approval to a bill that would allow the attorney general to demand that two additional judges be appointed to hear those divisive cases if he or she is unhappy with the district judge assigned the case.
Most lawsuits on those topics are currently heard in the Democratic stronghold of Travis County, home to the state capital.
Pending final approval in the House on Saturday, the bill would head to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. That would mark a major victory for GOP lawmakers, who cheered the measure as a way to allow more Texans a voice in that high-profile process.
“This is the result of decades of seeing just one county have any say in the school finance bills, and not wanting the same thing with any redistricting bills,” said Rep. Mike Schofield, a Katy Republican who sponsored the legislation.
Democrats, however, said the bill would give too much power to the attorney general, who represents the state in such cases. They argued that the attorney general, currently Republican Ken Paxton, could use the system just to find more sympathetic judges.
“It is forum shopping and judge shopping at its very core,” said Rep. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio.
[…]
Under the measure, an attorney general could petition the Texas Supreme Court’s chief justice to appoint two additional judges – a district judge from another county and an appeals court judge – to hear evidence along with the original district judge.
The chief justice would have to appoint the two extra judges.
Because why shouldn’t we give an ethical paragon like Ken Paxton more influence? The good news, as I suggested before, is that the practical effect of this will likely be limited. The current school finance case is already on the Supreme Court docket. We went about seven years from the previous Supreme Court school finance case ruling to the filing of the current lawsuit, so you have to figure that the next case, if and when there is one, is close to a decade away. And who knows, the Lege might actually try to fix it this time. (OK, yeah, probably not.) As for redistricting, here again I will say that as far as I know these cases are all filed in federal court, and I don’t see how this bill could apply to that. This bill is about partisan advantage, but partisan advantage is a fleeting thing. It says a lot about the priorities of the Republican majorities, but not much that we didn’t already know.