Kenneth Warren Paxton, Jr. v. Commission for Lawyer Discipline

Supreme Court of Texas
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No. 24-0452
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Kenneth Warren Paxton, Jr.,
Petitioner,

v.

Commission for Lawyer Discipline,
Respondent

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On Petition for Review from the
Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas
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PER CURIAM

We recently held that the Attorney General’s first assistant could
not be subjected to collateral professional discipline based on alleged
misstatements in initial pleadings filed on behalf of the State of Texas.
See Webster v. Comm’n for Law. Discipline, ___ S.W.3d ___, 2024 WL
5249494, at *1, *21 (Tex. Dec. 31, 2024). Pending at the time was this
petition for review, which involves the Commission for Lawyer
Discipline’s nearly identical lawsuit against Attorney General Ken
Paxton. In light of our decision in Webster, the Commission has nonsuited
its lawsuit and now moves to dismiss the Attorney General’s petition for
review as moot.
The Attorney General agrees that the case is now moot but
requests that in addition to vacating the court of appeals’ judgment, we
also exercise our discretion to vacate the court of appeals’ opinion. One
issue in that opinion did not arise in Webster: whether the Attorney
General could bring an interlocutory appeal under Civil Practice and
Remedies Code Section 51.014(a)(8). That issue did not arise in Webster
because the district court granted the first assistant’s plea to the
jurisdiction, whereas the district court presiding over this case denied
the plea to the jurisdiction.
A divided panel of the Fifth Court of Appeals held that Attorney
General Paxton “is not a governmental unit” authorized to appeal from
an interlocutory order that denies a plea to the jurisdiction. ___ S.W.3d
___, 2024 WL 1671953, at *1 (Tex. App.—Dallas Apr. 18, 2024) (internal
quotation marks omitted) (quoting TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE
§ 51.014(a)(8)). The majority thus held that it lacked appellate jurisdiction
to reach the merits. Id. Justice Miskel dissented. She would have held
that the statute authorized the Attorney General to appeal the denial of
his plea to the jurisdiction. Id. at *4 (Miskel, J., dissenting). She
therefore reached the merits and, as we did in Webster, concluded that
the district court should have granted the plea. Id.
We agree with the parties that the Commission’s nonsuit renders
this case moot. We therefore cannot resolve the disputed question of
appellate jurisdiction. Neither must we leave the court of appeals’
opinion standing, however. Instead, we have discretion to vacate the
opinion if we conclude that “the public interest would be served by a
vacatur.” Morath v. Lewis, 601 S.W.3d 785, 791 (Tex. 2020) (quoting U.S.

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Bancorp Mortg. Co. v. Bonner Mall P’ship, 513 U.S. 18, 26 (1994)).
In our view, the public interest would be served by vacatur here.
As in Morath, the “State is a frequent litigant”; the court of appeals’
opinion, if left standing, would “ha[ve] some meaningful precedential
value”; the issue it decided is “potentially of consequence” far beyond the
circumstances of this single case; and we recently resolved a case on the
merits that is nearly identical to this one. See id. at 791-92. Where
“mootness results from [the] unilateral action of the party who prevailed
below,” as it does here, we have observed that “the case for preventing
the unreviewable decision ‘from spawning any legal consequences’ is at
its strongest.” Id. at 791 (first quoting Bancorp, 513 U.S. at 23; and then
quoting United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36, 41 (1950)).
Accordingly, after granting the petition for review and without
hearing oral argument or considering the merits, the Court vacates the
judgment and the opinion of the court of appeals and dismisses the case
as moot. See TEX. R. APP. P. 56.2.

OPINION DELIVERED: February 14, 2025

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