Texas Attorney General and smirking schmuck Ken Paxton has lost again.
The arch-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down a state law that illegally limited the availability of interpreters by stipulating that they must be registered to vote in the same county as person they're interpreting for.
From the Texas Tribune:
The legal voting rights squabble stems from a 2014 incident in which the late Mallika Das, a Williamson County resident, was unable to get help from her son to cast her ballot.
A U.S. citizen born in India, Das had brought her son, Saurabh, to help her vote. She spoke Bengali, and her limited English proficiency had made it difficult in the past. But when Saurabh told poll workers he intended to interpret the ballot for his mother, an election official determined he didn’t meet the state’s voter registration requirements because he was registered to vote in neighboring Travis County.
The Fifth Circuit ruled that the state law "impermissibly narrows" rights guaranteed by federal law.
Ken Paxton's office did not immediately say whether he would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, but I expect he will. That's generally what he does. In any case, I'm skeptical that the Supreme Court will agree to review the case. This appears to be a pretty cut and dry ruling from the most conservative district court in the country.