Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican running in the 2026 Texas U.S. Senate election, announced today that he’s suing Jolt Initiatives, a non-profit organization that advocates for the civic participation of Latinos in Texas. The Attorney General is asking the Court to dissolve Jolt’s corporate charter.
Paxton describes Jolt as a “radical activist organization,” and accuses it of “unlawfully registering illegals to vote in Texas.”
According to his press release (below), an investigation led by his office uncovered that “JOLT operatives were stationed outside Texas Department of Motor Vehicles locations” and “coordinated the scheme to recruit and solicit individuals to submit unlawful voter registration applications, which could be designed to register illegal aliens who lack proper identification.”
BREAKING: I’m suing a radical organization for unlawfully registering illegals to vote in Texas.
Any organization attempting to register illegals, who are all criminals, must be completely crushed and shut down immediately. pic.twitter.com/IoyVaAyhYA
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) November 10, 2025
Jolt has responded with a strong condemnation of Paxton’s lawsuit and has “filed a motion asking the Court to dismiss this meritless lawsuit, or transfer it to Houston, where Jolt is headquartered.” (Paxton filed the lawsuit in Fort Worth, 260 miles away from Houston.)
Jolt Initiative’s Executive Director Jackie Bastard said in a statement: “The Attorney General is abusing his authority by using the state’s legal tool of dissolution, an extreme measure, against Jolt simply because we are effective at registering Latino voters.” Bastard added: “This is a systematic effort to dismantle the infrastructure of Latino civic engagement in Texas.”
Mimi Marziani, of the law firm Marziani, Stevens & Gonzalez (which is representing Jolt), said of the lawsuit: “This action is part of the AG’s larger efforts to bully civic engagement organizations. Jolt is simply the latest target of his unlawful campaign to undermine and silence civil rights groups in Texas.”
Marziani also noted that the State’s claims ignore the fact that Jolt Volunteer Deputy Registrars (VDRs) “are legally required to accept all completed forms, while the State itself holds the sole power to verify eligibility.”
Note: In September 2024, Jolt Initiative sued Paxton in federal court “to stop his baseless demand for the organization’s records related to its voter registration and civic engagement efforts.”
Jolt reported that Paxton served the organization with a “request to examine” letter that demanded documents containing confidential information, including the identities of its volunteer deputy registrars and the private citizens they have registered to vote. The case was dismissed in October.