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_{Editor's note: This story contains explicit language.}

In early August, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an explosive lawsuit, accusing Beto O’Rourke of bribery, fraud and campaign finance violations for supporting Texas Democrats who left the state to protest new GOP congressional maps.

Six weeks, four courts, two counties, dueling rulings and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses later, Paxton’s case against the former El Paso congressman seems on the brink of collapse.

Last week, the all-Republican 15th Court of Appeals undid the temporary restraining order that prevented O’Rourke and his organization from fundraising and distributing donations, ruling it an unconstitutional violation of free speech protections.

While acknowledging the case raises "unusual questions" about whether political funds can be used to help lawmakers leave the state, the court said it is an improper chilling of free speech to preemptively block an organization from spending its money.

“[T]he question today is not whether such activities can be punished after the fact … but whether they can be prohibited before they occur based on a suspicion that they might,” the justices wrote in their unanimous ruling. “At this stage, where little evidence has been offered, the latter would constitute an unconstitutional prior restraint of political activity that may or may not prove to be lawful.”

The court still has to rule on the rest of the appeal, but in Friday’s opinion, they cast doubt on some of Paxton’s central arguments. Paxton condemned the ruling as a constitutional crisis, slamming the court’s “activist judges,” along with the all-GOP Texas Supreme Court for declining to step in.

O’Rourke and his group donated more than $1 million to the Texas House Democratic Caucus, Texas Legislative Black Caucus and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which they said benefited all members, whether or not they left the state, and came with no strings attached, like any other political donation.

The group also spent over $400,000 on legal fees fighting this lawsuit, but O’Rourke said he is undeterred.

“If Paxton is successful in draining the remaining resources we use to run Powered by People through these expensive lawsuits, if he forces us to close our doors … we’ll open new ones, all across the state, all over the country,” he wrote on his Substack.

Dueling court rulings

On August 3, 2025, a cadre of Texas House Democrats left the state to deny the Legislature the headcount necessary to pass a new congressional map gerrymandered to flip several Democratic districts. With the U.S. House majority in play, several major Democratic groups vowed to help the Texas lawmakers pay for their sudden abscondment.

One of those groups was Powered by People, a political action committee founded by O’Rourke that focuses on voter registration and organizing. O’Rourke promised to “have the backs of these heroic state lawmakers for as long as it takes to stop Trump’s power grab.”

On Sept. 8, Paxton sued O’Rourke and Powered by People, saying in a statement that lawmakers were “likely accepting Beto Bribes to underwrite their jet-setting sideshow in far-flung places and misleadingly raising political funds to pay for personal expenses.”

A Tarrant County judge swiftly granted a temporary restraining order and an injunction, preventing O’Rourke or Powered by People from fundraising for or distributing funds to support the absent Democrats. After O’Rourke hosted a Fort Worth rally, where he continued to fundraise and told rallygoers to “fuck the rules,” Paxton asked the judge to hold him in contempt, including by putting him in jail.

O’Rourke’s attorneys said the state “knowingly [took] a statement entirely out of context to intentionally misrepresent” its meaning. They also accused Paxton’s office of misrepresenting the injunction, which only blocked them from fundraising for “non-political purposes.”

Paxton later amended his lawsuit to try to revoke Powered by People’s charter entirely.

At the same time, O’Rourke filed his own lawsuit in El Paso County, saying Paxton was engaging in a “fishing expedition, constitutional rights be damned.” He asked the Tarrant County court to move all proceedings to El Paso, and dissolve the restraining order.

The Tarrant County judge rejected that request and expanded the restraining order to freeze Powered by People’s assets in Texas, as well as the Texas-based assets of ActBlue, a major Democratic fundraising platform.

A few days later, an El Paso judge temporarily blocked Paxton from taking legal action against O’Rourke or his organization, and ordered Paxton to be deposed. In response, the Tarrant County judge accused O’Rourke of harassing Paxton, and issued her own ruling in the opposite direction, prohibiting him or Powered by People from taking legal action against the attorney general.

The 15th Court of Appeals

With the two district courts issuing competing rulings and getting no closer to a resolution, O’Rourke’s attorneys turned to a higher power — the 15th Court of Appeals.

While Texas’ other appellate courts have regional jurisdiction, the 15th court was created by the Legislature in 2023 to hear all cases relating to state government, including any appeals by or against the state. In practice, this allows the state to avoid appellate courts elected by voters from the state’s largest, and bluest, counties.

The three current justices on the court are all Republicans appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott. He will get the chance to appoint two more in 2027.

On Aug. 25, O’Rourke’s lawyers asked the court to dismiss Paxton’s case outright, or if not, to quash the temporary restraining orders that had frozen Powered by People’s assets and transfer the case to El Paso.

The justices asked for the state’s response by the end of the next day. The attorney general’s office said this was a “functionally impossible task” and asked for a 14-day extension. In their filing, the state’s lawyers said if the extension wasn’t granted by 4:30 p.m. that day, they would ask the Texas Supreme Court to intervene.

At 5:01 p.m., the court granted the 14-day extension and left the temporary restraining orders in place, but also paused a forthcoming hearing in Tarrant County where Paxton hoped to secure a contempt ruling and a wider injunction against O’Rourke.

One minute later, according to the court, Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court to intervene, which they promptly declined to do. He then lashed out on social media at the “Beto-loving Fifteenth Court of Appeals,” saying in a statement that the decision to delay the hearing to consider the appeal petition was unprecedented and “a blindly political attempt to aid fraudster Beto O’Rourke.”

“You think the 15th appeals court judges appointed by Greg Abbott are working for me?” O’Rourke asked in response. “You okay?”

This reaction did not seem to help Paxton’s standing before the justices. When they issued their Friday ruling reversing the temporary restraining order against O’Rourke, they not only cast doubt on many of his legal arguments, they also took the time to note his political ambitions.

“Here, the State — represented by the current Attorney General who is also a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate — has procured a temporary restraining order barring a political action committee supporting Democratic Party candidates from soliciting, accepting, and spending certain contributions,” the justices wrote.

This amounts to prior restraint, an unconstitutional quashing of free speech before a violation has occurred, they ruled.

“Tools, whether legal or political, for eliminating quorum breaks may exist,” they wrote. “But our Texan founding fathers — like our American founding fathers — took prior restraints on political speech out of the tool kit when they enshrined the right to free speech in our Constitution.”

They also teed up arguments against Paxton’s claim that O’Rourke’s fundraising qualifies as a violation of the state’s consumer protection law.

“Despite the raucous nature of Texas’ political climate over the spanning decades” since the consumer protection law went into effect, “the state fails to cite a single case in which [it] has been interpreted to apply to political solicitations,” the justices wrote.

Paxton’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Friday’s ruling, including whether it intends to appeal Friday’s ruling. In his most recent statement on the case, Paxton said he would “stop at nothing to ensure Beto O’Rourke and his radical organization are held accountable to the full extent of the law.”

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Three featured TribFest speakers confirmed! You don’t want to miss ​​Deb Haaland, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and 2026 Democratic candidate for New Mexico governor; state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston and 2026 Republican candidate for Texas Attorney General; and Jake Tapper, anchor of CNN’s “The Lead” and “State of the Union” at the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Get your tickets today!

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