Travis County Judge Orders the Group Behind the Texas Trans Mailers to Answer Questions Under Oath
A Travis County judge has ordered the Wyoming-registered group named on millions of Texas mailers to sit for a deposition this week - the first sworn answers in the fight over texts and pamphlets that a real Texas advocacy group says were made to look like its own.
The sender of one of the Texas election season's strangest mail campaigns will have to answer questions under oath. Travis County District Judge Jan Soifer ruled late Tuesday that a representative of the Texas Transgender Student Union - a limited liability company registered last month in Wyoming, with a mailing address linked to a Houston post office box - must sit for a deposition, requested by the Transgender Education Network of Texas, known as TENT. Soifer denied the Wyoming group's motion to dismiss the case, according to a TENT spokesperson, and also ordered Infobip, the messaging company whose client sent a parallel series of text messages, to respond to written deposition questions.
The communications at issue reached Texans statewide this month. Text messages began arriving on October 12, advertising guides on school bathrooms and gender-affirming care and linking to TENT's website - messages TENT says it did not send. Mailers followed starting October 17, addressed to the 'students' of homes across Texas and marketed as resources for LGBTQ+ youth; TENT says they were worded to appear to come from TENT, and that the resemblance brought the organization backlash that included threats of violence. TENT's lawyer told the court the mailers numbered an estimated 3.6 to 4.2 million, and that the address printed on them sits one digit away from TENT's own post office box.
The schedule Soifer set is fast: the LLC's representative is to sit for a deposition over Zoom on Friday, and Infobip's written answers are due Thursday, under the Rule 202 pre-suit petition TENT filed last week. The judge said she will sign a protective order keeping some of the Infobip customer's confidential information private. Chris Hilton, a former lawyer in Attorney General Ken Paxton's office who represents the Wyoming group, told the court his clients will stop sending the pamphlets but argued their actions are protected by the First Amendment; the group will appeal Soifer's ruling to the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals, according to a court filing.
The Austin case is not the only proceeding. In West Texas, Republican District Attorney Sarah Stogner has opened a criminal investigation into the mailers, saying they were apparent forgeries intended to influence voters. Who ultimately paid for and directed the campaign remains, as of Thursday, unanswered in public - which is precisely the question the depositions are meant to reach.
