Texas backs down after accusing agency of religious discrimination in driver handbook
Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed a driver’s manual with no ads was somehow discriminating against Christians. Now he's backing down.
This newsletter is free and goes out to over 23,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe or use my usual Patreon page!
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has, without explanation, given up on his own lawsuit against the state’s Department of Public Safety, after he claimed they were illegally forbidding religious ads from appearing in the official “Driver’s Handbook.”
As reporter Cora Neas of KXAN explained back in January, the lawsuit said DPS had a rule specifically prohibiting religious advertising in the handbook:
“DPS and the Commission Members have adopted a rule prohibiting ‘religious ads’ in the Handbook,” the filing states. “This rule discriminates against religious organizations’ speech … allowing secular entities to purchase ad space or otherwise engage in secular speech in the Handbook.”
The rule in question is 15.131 (2)(A) in Title 37 of the Texas Administrative Code (TAC):
That rule said the Texas Driver Handbook could have advertising inside of it… as long as it wasn’t controversial or ideological. No religion, no politics, nothing “offensive,” etc.
Paxton, digging to find a culture war issue where none existed, said that was proof that DPS was treating religion unfairly. If he wanted to prove it, all he had to do was show how DPS allowed, say, a restaurant to post an ad in the Handbook while denying the same opportunity to a religious group that wanted to purchase an inoffensive ad.
Yet the lawsuit never offered any of that smoking gun evidence. Not even close. That’s because the current version of the Handbook didn’t have any ads at all. Neither did an older version from 2012. Which made sense since people weren’t reading that damn book unless they were studying to get their license, and even then, it’d be downright weird to see product placement in there. That would be like putting an ad in the dictionary.
So even if the law allowed for advertising in the book, there was no proof DPS accepted ads, much less discriminated against certain groups that wanted to purchase them. In fact, even if you wanted to place an ad, there was nowhere on the DPS website with details about where to send your money.
That’s why the relevant section of the lawsuit, laying out the facts, was only about a page long. Paxton didn’t need to waste any time laying out proof of injustice because there wasn’t any.
Furthermore, even though he’s the attorney general, and even though the DPS is another government agency, there was no indication anyone in Paxton’s office even bothered to make a single phone call to see if their claims had any validity to them.
On Friday, DPS told KXAN that it does not use ads in the driver handbook, and hasn’t had any discussions with the AG about the subject.
No discussions whatsoever. Shocking.
Paxton demanded that a judge step in and forbid DPS from rejecting ads with religious content... even though they’d never done anything like that. But Paxton insisted the “harm to Texas citizens is imminent” if he doesn’t get his way.
And yet a few weeks ago, without any explanation, Paxton abandoned his lawsuit. According to Cora Neas at KXAN:
According to Travis County court records, the lawsuit was withdrawn on Feb. 20 by Paxton’s office with a “notice of nonsuit.” KXAN has reached out to the Travis County courts for a copy of the notice.
This filing is used when attorneys want to end their case early, typically because they were “unable to make an adequate showing or [are] unwilling to continue with the case,” according to the Legal Information Institute.
That’s… it? He filed the baseless case, got some headlines from it, caused needless chaos in DPS, and after all that, he’s just running away because he’s got nothing to back it up?
What a waste of everyone’s time. It’s utter proof that Paxton isn’t interested in the work he’s running to do, but only interested in the headlines that might result from him pushing the Christian Nationalist agenda. It’s just one of his many awful qualities and a reason Republicans are worried he may win the U.S. Senate primary in his state.
But it just proves what DPS and the church/state separation crowd were saying when he filed the lawsuit months ago: There’s nothing to see here. Religious discrimination of any kind is unacceptable under the law, but there was no proof that was happening here, and if Paxton actually spoke to anyone in his state government, he would have known that. He chose to waste everyone’s resources and time instead. When it came time to put up, Ken Paxton shut up.
As I said before, Paxton’s lawsuit showed us just how little facts matter to conservatives in our current legal system. At a time when Republicans insist there’s bias against Christians in this country—to the point where the Trump administration has put together a task force to combat it—the most corrupt Christian politicians in the country can’t even seem to manufacture a case of it.
If religious discrimination were real and widespread, Paxton wouldn’t need to make shit up like he did here.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
Why would a driver's handbook need religious material of any sort? What do the two even have in common?
Looks like the supremely corrupt Paxton tried to mark his territory only to wind up pissing into a strong wind.
Start making these religious zealots personally liable for attorney fee shifting.