Texas Judge Rebukes AG For Attacks Against Nonprofit Migrant Shelter
In El Paso yesterday, a Texas judge issued a stinging rebuke of Texas AG Ken Paxton’s efforts to shut down Annunciation House, a small Catholic nonprofit in El Paso that provides food and shelter to homeless people. The Judge called Paxton’s efforts outrageous, intolerable and downright unconstitutional. Many of Annunciation House’s beneficiaries are migrants and that has Paxton’s back up. In the process of the rebuke, the Judge even went so far as to declare two Texas statutes facially unconstitutional and threw those out too.
We first reported that Paxton issued an administrative subpoena to Annunciation House amidst a campaign seeking to treat Annunciation House as though its sheltering, feeding, and clothing of migrants was part of an illegal immigration conspiracy. For months, now, Paxton has attributed all sorts of state and federal criminal violations to Annunciation House, a rather small and simple organization feeding and sheltering homeless people who show up in the border town. All the allegedly illegal activities revolve around the central accusation — one condemned as “madness” by the Pope, himself — that Annunciation is involved in human smuggling and other conspiracies involving illegal immigration.
Paxton, who is pretty clearly aspiring to higher office, should have seen this coming when the judge issued an earlier ruling denying an expedited process and in which he described the AG as attempting to “ride roughshod” over the rights of a “peaceable” nonprofit.
In the case at hand, the last, actual, peaceable, non-contested status which preceded the pending controversy was Annunciation’s House right to exist as a non-profit entity and conduct business in the State of Texas. The Attorney General’s efforts to run roughshod over Annunciation House, without regard to due process or fair play, call into question the true motivation for the Attorney General’s attempt to prevent Annunciation House from providing the humanitarian and social services that it provides. There is a real and credible concern that the attempt to prevent Annunciation House from conducting business in Texas was predetermined.
Here is the stinging part of Monday’s order granting summary judgment:
The record before this Court makes clear that the Texas Attorney General’s use of the request to examine documents from Annunciation House was a pretext to justify its harassment of Annunciation House employees and the persons seeking refuge. This Court previously expressed its concern that the Attorney General did not identify what laws he believed were being violated from the outset. See Order of March 10, 2024, ¶ 1. In fact, the record before the Court now establishes that the Attorney General was seeking evidence of alleged criminal activity all along. This is outrageous and intolerable.
. . .
The Texas Attorney General’s disregard for the constitutional rights of Annunciation House employees and its guests vindicates the Supreme Court’s concerns over statutes that fail to provide a process for precompliance review. For these reasons, the Court finds Sections 12.151 and 12.152 of the Texas Business Organizations Code to be facially unconstitutional.
Additionally, the Attorney General’s actions in its use of the request to examine and his predetermined efforts to close down Annunciation House are substantially motivated by his retaliation against Annunciation House’s exercise of its First Amendment right to expressive association, as proscribed by Boy Scouts of America v. Dalte, 530 U.S. 640, 648 (2000) and Keenan v. Tejeda, 20 F.3d 252, 259 (5th Cir. 2002).
Nevertheless, having established that TEX. BUS. ORGS. CODE 121.151 and 12.152 are facially unconstitutional, the Attorney General could have provided Annunciation House the required precompliance review that would have allowed it to investigate any alleged violations of law. Instead, the Attorney General chose to harass a human rights organization with impunity and with disregard to his duty to faithfully uphold the laws of Texas and the United States.
Not only that, the Judge found the entire process violative of the Texas version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The AG, according to the Court “violates the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act by substantially burdening Annunciation House’s free exercise of religion and failing to use the ‘least restrictive means’ of securing compliance with the law.” That finding previews arguments that might be made in other contexts by religious organizations engaged in unpopular activities.
darryll k. jones