Ken Paxton Not Young

The Fifth Circuit found that the Ex Parte Young exception to Eleventh-Amendment immunity (Mr. Young appears to the right) did not apply to the Texas Attorney General’s potential enforcement of a statute that was in conflict with a City of Austin ordinance: “[N]one of the cases the City cites to demonstrate the Attorney General’s ‘habit’ of intervening in suits involving municipal ordinances to ‘enforce the supremacy of state law’ have any overlapping facts with this case or are even remotely related to the Ordinance. And the mere fact that the Attorney General has the authority to enforce § 250.007 cannot be said to ‘constrain’ the City from enforcing the Ordinance. The City simply provides no evidence that the Attorney General may “similarly bring a proceeding” to enforce § 250.007: that he has chosen to intervene to defend different statutes under different circumstances does not show that he is likely to do the same here. . . . Thus, we find that Attorney General Paxton lacks the requisite ‘connection to the enforcement’ of § 250.007.” City of Austin v. Paxton, No. 18-50646 (Dec. 4, 2019).