Jury duty auto enrollment: Texas Gov. Abbott says he will sue over a law giving Texas residents the right to join the military. But the jury duty law is a state law.
ObamaCare premium tax: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Obama administration over the requirement that all Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty.
Infrastructure projects: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the federal government over environmental permits required for proposed infrastructure projects.
Suit challenges Texas voter ID law: Paxton announced he was suing the federal government over a section of the Voting Rights Act that requires states to have photo identification to vote.
Paxton is a polarizing figure, from his role in a conservative "war on terror" to his lawsuits against the federal government to his role as architect of the Texas bill that has put Texas at the center of the national immigration debate.
He led a group of Texas lawmakers that wrote the controversial SB4 bill, which they said was about stopping criminal undocumented immigrants but opponents said was really meant to target the Latino community.
He did not support the compromise bill that the state sent to Congress that would offer legal status for millions of unauthorized immigrants who meet certain conditions, but he was satisfied to put the bill on his desk and allow it to become law without his signature.
"I think it's good policy. It will enhance border security," Paxton said.
Democrats lambasted the bill as a poll tax. They claimed the law made it difficult for Hispanic residents to vote and raised costs for nonprofits that help register new voters, according to the Texas Tribune.
Texas is also a big supporter of President Trump.
The administration's most contentious decision came in May when the Department of Justice rescinded Obama administration guidance to schools, saying schools should not discriminate against students based on their sexual orientation or transgender status. The guidance, known as Title IX, was put into place during the Obama administration to clarify the intent of a 1972 Title IX that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.
"I'll be the first one to say that the way the law was originally interpreted under the Obama administration was too broad, it required schools to allow men in women's showers, locker rooms and bathrooms," Paxton said in May after the guidance was rescinded. "But I'm not opposed to allowing transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity."
And now he is suing the federal government, as his office announced Thursday.
The suit "seeks to overturn a flawed, one-size-fits-all mandate issued by the Obama administration that has left local communities and families across Texas confused and in uncharted legal territory," according to a news release.
Paxton's office says the lawsuit challenges a section of the Voting Rights Act called the "Motor Voter" section.
It was enacted in 1993 by the Clinton administration in response to a 1990 Texas law that required everyone to have a state-issued driver's license. The law was meant to help ensure everyone had the correct address on their driver's license when registering to vote.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in a challenge brought by voting rights advocates, including former President George W. Bush and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.
Texas' new voter ID law was approved with the same "Motor Voter" language, which requires states to offer all of its residents the opportunity to register to vote if they interact with a state or local election official.
While the federal law bars requirements "more stringent" than those in effect on the date the state's voters were first allowed to register, and there are several other exceptions, it also says the states must provide residents of other states "the opportunity to register and vote without charge."
State Republican lawmakers say the suit, in part, is about the cost of allowing all residents to register to vote, regardless of whether they need to register.
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide later this year whether that portion of the law -- or something like it -- is legal under the Voting Rights Act.
"So if you're like me, you’re trying to make sense of why the Trump administration is suing Texas, and you’re here because you’ve got a headache from reading through all the legal-ese," PolitiFact Texas said when it came to the headlines on its webpage.
A federal judge upheld the Texas voter ID law and Paxton's lawsuit says the law “suffers from all of the same constitutional infirmities as its predecessor."
"Now the fight is coming to our state in the form of the Trump administration’s decision to sue Texas," Greg Abbott, the governor who is widely seen as running for president in 2020, said during his State of the State address last year. "This administration will not rest until every Texan’s right to vote is fully restored."
It is not the first time Texas has been the center of a debate over a voting rights.
In 2013, Texas Republicans took over the federal government's Election Assistance Commission, which was created to ensure every citizen had access to the polls. The chairman of the commission, Thomas Hicks, was ousted after some Republicans complained about how the agency was run.
Democrats also claim the law discourages minority voters from exercising their right to vote.
"The law is going to have a chilling effect on the ability of people to exercise their right to vote," said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa. "It is the most discriminatory piece of legislation that I have ever seen."
But not everyone in Texas agrees that the law is illegal.
Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted on Monday that the lawsuit is about a "federal mandate."
Federal courts have rejected these claims in other cases.
The lawsuit also says that federal officials have allowed Texas to follow the motor voter section of the Voting Rights Act to "a legal, constitutional, and statutory end nowhere near what Congress envisioned."
NPR was not able to find any reference to lawsuits in federal court challenging the law.
In a press release, a spokeswoman for the Texas Civil Rights Project said in response to Paxton's lawsuit, the ACLU and Project Vote's lawsuit in federal court remains the only viable challenge to the Texas law.
"The Texas Attorney General’s lawsuit is an attempt to distract from the lawsuit we filed earlier this year, which is currently in federal court," ACLU's deputy legal director Dale Ho said in a statement. "There are not two lawsuits to speak of in this matter. The truth is that the Texas Attorney General is abdicating his role as the chief legal officer of the state to play political games for the purpose of appeasing the president."
We contacted the Texas Secretary of State's office for its reaction to the suit.
"The attorney general is a constitutional officer who is expected to uphold the law," said spokeswoman Sam Taylor. "We will review the lawsuit and determine whether it has merit."
The Associated Press and Texas Tribune contributed
