Paxton Drops Nearly Three-Year Fight to Shut Down Annunciation House

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office has dropped its effort to shut down Annunciation House, the Catholic shelter network in El Paso that houses migrants, ending a case that began in February 2024 and went to the Texas Supreme Court. The office filed a notice of nonsuit with prejudice on Monday, El Paso Matters reported, which means the state cannot bring similar claims against the organization again. Paxton’s office did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment.

The case started with a records demand. On February 7, 2024, three state officials arrived at one of the shelters with a formal “Request to Examine” its records, according to the Supreme Court’s account. The shelter’s lawyer offered to respond within 30 days, and the attorney general demanded compliance by the next day. Annunciation House went to court in El Paso and won a temporary restraining order. Paxton then asked for leave to file a quo warranto action to revoke the nonprofit’s state charter, and his amended filings accused it of “systematic conduct that constitutes illegal alien harboring and operation of a stash house.”

Judge Francisco X. Dominguez of the 205th District Court ruled for the shelter in 2024. He held the records statute in the Business Organizations Code facially unconstitutional, found that the request was religious harassment under state law, and refused to let the quo warranto case go forward.

The Texas Supreme Court reversed him on May 30, 2025. “Our primary holding is that the attorney general has the constitutional authority to file his proposed quo warranto action, which simply allows the usual litigation process to unfold,” Justice Evan Young wrote for the court. The court sent the case back to El Paso and said it expressed “no view as to the course or outcome of those further proceedings.” A hearing in district court had been set for March, El Paso Matters reported, and Annunciation House director Ruben Garcia said he expected to be deposed this week.

Paxton lost his race for the U.S. Senate on November 3 and leaves office in January. His successor, Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson, has said he will review Paxton’s pending litigation and “clear out the political nonsense,” as the Texian Partisan reported. None of the reporting says Johnson asked for the case to be dropped.

“It’s very gratifying that this has now ended. It’s over,” Garcia told El Paso Matters. He said he now wants the Legislature to “find a way to prevent this from happening.”

The ruling that let the case go forward still stands. The Texas Supreme Court held that the attorney general has the authority to ask a Texas court to revoke the charter of a nonprofit chartered under Texas law, and in January that authority passes to Johnson. A nonsuit with prejudice ends the case against Annunciation House without a ruling on any of the claims the court sent back to El Paso.