Big Tech finds a foe in Texas’ robust consumer protection laws and AG Ken Paxton

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

In the final days of his GOP runoff campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed lawsuits against Netflix, WhatsApp and Discord, and launched another investigation into Meta.

During his victory speech, he cemented a key pillar of his campaign: cracking down on bad actors in Big Tech.

“As attorney general, I've sued some of the largest companies in the world … for taking advantage of our kids by exposing them to dangerous, addictive material,” Paxton said Tuesday night. “In Washington, I will not stop fighting to protect Texas children from Big Tech.”

The stump speech has merit.

Thanks to robust state laws surrounding consumer protection and data privacy and a sympathetic federal appeals court, Paxton is one of the most prolific litigators of Big Tech among state attorneys general, according to legal experts. Paxton’s office has filed at least two dozen lawsuits against large tech companies in the past five years and secured some of the largest settlements in the history of state litigation.

The legal action serves as a useful campaign tool as Paxton embarks on what promises to be a contentious U.S. Senate race against Austin Democratic state Rep. James Talarico as public opinion on artificial intelligence and Big Tech sours.

“You're going to hear more from Ken Paxton on this, you're going to hear more from Republicans, I think, up and down the ballot on this,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist who has worked in national and Texas politics. “There is a growing groundswell of opposition to the idea of Big Tech oligarchs … you hear it from (U.S. Sen.) Bernie Sanders and you hear it from Ken Paxton.”

Separate from the campaign trail, Paxton’s efforts are having real world impacts.

Two of the largest settlements a state has ever obtained from a tech company have come from Texas. In 2024, Paxton announced a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta to stop the company from obtaining Texas users’ biometric data without their permission, described by Paxton’s office as the largest ever settlement obtained from a lawsuit brought by a single state. In October 2025, Paxton announced a $1.4 billion settlement with Google for tracking Texas users’ data without their permission. That money, paid over several years in the case of Meta, is sent to the Texas State Treasury and becomes state revenue.

“He is known as one of the more litigious in this space, and he’s also been winning,” said Joanna Forster, a partner at Crowell and Moring LLP who represents and advises large tech companies. “If I were him, keep doing what’s been winning.”

Paxton in the summer of 2024 created a division within the Office of the Attorney General dedicated to enforcement of Texas’ privacy laws against Big Tech firms. Paxton cited the growing ability of tech companies to collect and sell data on their users and promised to use existing state law to pursue legal actions. Texas has some of the most comprehensive AI and consumer protection laws of any state.

Paxton has successfully leveraged that robust cache of legislation, as well as a sympathetic bench on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, allowing him to create new law in a variety of categories applying to Big Tech, Forster said.

Paxton makes frequent use of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act, suing Netflix, Meta and WhatsApp, and messaging app Discord under the statute in recent months. Those lawsuits broadly hinge on a legal argument that Texas consumers were lied to by the companies, which misrepresented how they use consumers’ data, Paxton argued.

Paxton used the Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, a law on the books since 2009 that prohibits the collection of biometric data without consent, to sue Meta in the case that led to the $1.4 billion settlement.

The Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment Act and the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, both passed by the Legislature in 2023, were cited in a 2024 lawsuit against TikTok, as well as the December 2024 announcement that Paxton’s office would investigate 15 AI and social media companies over their safety and privacy practices for minors.

Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, sweeping legislation passed last year that includes measures to rein in AI technology that manipulate human behavior and create deep fakes, gives Paxton an additional tool to go after companies, Forster said.

State attorneys general across the country, regardless of political party, are taking legal action against Big Tech companies at a high rate, and Texas is among the most prolific, said Matthew F. Ferraro, also a partner at Crowell and Moring LLP and former senior counsel for cybersecurity and emerging technology to the Secretary of Homeland Security under President Joe Biden’s administration.

“That is an across-the-spectrum series of regulators who are interested in these issues, and that's why I think the political developments are probably not going to change the central fact, which is that technology companies are going to be under increasing scrutiny from a variety of regulators across the country,” Ferraro said.

The increasing litigation is partially due to the bipartisan agreement among voters that tech companies need to be regulated more strictly, Steinhauser said. Stories like the case of a 13-year-old girl who was groomed over Roblox and Discord before being sexually assaulted in her Galveston home by an adult man only serve to reinforce public opinion, he added.

Recent public opinion polling has found Americans critical of Big Tech companies in a variety of areas, including bipartisan opposition to the construction of data centers, a belief social media companies wield too much power and a broad distrust of tech CEOs.

“Part of the reason Ken [Paxton] is taking it up, I think, is it’s a real problem and he’s heard about it, his team has heard about it, or they’ve experienced it with their own children,” Steinhauser said. “If the politics of this was bad, maybe they wouldn’t do it, but I think the politics of it is good, and it just so happens it’s a real issue on voters’ minds.”

The Paxton and Talarico campaigns, as well as the Texas Attorney General’s Office, did not respond to requests for comment.

While it may be good politics for Democrats and Republicans, the legal action by states is creating a growing patchwork of laws and court rulings that tech companies are subject to across the country, and the federal government has done little to address the fractious regulatory environment, Forster said. Companies are increasingly faced with either having different rules for users in different states, pulling out of states altogether or building their product to meet the most restrictive state’s laws.

“I think none of those options is a good one for the industry,” Forster said.