A Travis County judge has ruled in favor of the Texas Medical Board’s motion to disqualify the Office of the Attorney General as an intervenor in Dr. Mary Talley Bowden’s case, removing Paxton from litigating the case.
Bowden announced the decision by Judge Catherine A. Mauzy of the 419th Judicial District Court of Travis County on X.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Ken Paxton stepped into a legal battle against the Texas Medical Board (TMB) on the side of Bowden. Bowden was reprimanded by the TMB after “attempting to treat a patient at a facility where she lacked privileges” during the COVID pandemic.
Paxton requested that a Travis County Court declare the board’s public reprimand against Bowden void and permanently block the board from taking any additional actions against her related to the case.
“I will not stand by as Dr. Bowden has her Constitutional rights trampled and ability to serve her patients impeded with an illegal reprimand,” Paxton said at the time. “Dr. Bowden has been a champion for health freedom, selflessly served her patients, and acted in full accordance with the law.”
Paxton also raised concerns in his petition that Bowden did not receive due process in her case and that the board was acting “on nothing more than personal animosity and spite.”
In its motion, the TMB argued that the AG’s office “agreed and swiftly assigned counsel” when the Texas Medical Board requested representation from the Office of the Attorney General prior to representing Bowden in the case.
Yet the medical board alleges that the AG’s office changed its mind after it “exchanged privileged communications with the Board, worked through initial litigation strategy, drafted a plea to the jurisdiction and answer, and filed that answer as ‘Attorneys for Defendant Texas Medical Board.’”
The TMB further alleged that the AG’s office quietly recalled “the answer it had filed so that no public record of the representation would remain. It then sent a letter to the board ‘declining’ the representation it already accepted, and it appeared in this very lawsuit purporting to represent the State of Texas against its former client.”
The board urged the court to disqualify the AG’s office from Bowden’s representation, arguing it violates the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct that disallows a lawyer from intervening and taking a position in a case that is adverse to its former client.
The Office of the Attorney General generally represents the state agency in such cases, making the case unique since representation was given to Bowden instead.
