Texas State Bar

The State Bar of Texas, the official regulatory body for Texas lawyers, has had professional misconduct charges pending against Paxton since 2022 over his Texas v. Pennsylvania (2020) election lawsuit; the case has worked through procedural challenges at the Texas Supreme Court and remains unresolved. The Bar's core values — rule of law, attorney professional ethics, judicial independence, integrity of the legal profession, and access to justice for the indigent — would treat Paxton's whole record as a serial violation: the impeachment was rooted in alleged abuse of his office as the state's chief lawyer, the Tribune/ProPublica forum-shopping investigation documents practices the Bar's grievance committee treats as professional misconduct, and the Waco one-day plea deal raises questions about prosecutorial integrity. He earns one point for technical competence in litigation outcomes. Talarico is not a lawyer himself, but his Senate platform centers anti-corruption, a SCOTUS binding code of conduct with recusal rules, financial disclosure requirements, gift limits, judicial independence, and rule-of-law framing that aligns directly with State Bar values. He loses some points on Citizens United position (touches lawyer-association free-speech concerns) and on aggressive antitrust expansion.