Paxton continues his fight against Harris County's guaranteed income program

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed suit against the Harris County District Court to prevent the resumption of what he considers an illegal “income guarantee” initiative in Houston.

The move is in response to the county's efforts to revive a program that the Texas Supreme Court previously declared unconstitutional.

According to Paxton's office, the program in question, called “Uplift Harris,” was designed to distribute public funds without restrictions to nearly 2,000 Harris County residents, including some noncitizens.

The Uplift Harris County Guaranteed Income pilot program, introduced in 2023 by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, provided 1,928 residents with monthly payments of about $500 for 18 months. The payments were distributed via direct deposits or prepaid debit cards.

In his most recent lawsuit, Paxton claimed the program was unconstitutional because it relied on arbitrary criteria for randomly selecting applicants.

To qualify, applicants must be at least 200 percent below the federal poverty level and live in a designated “high-poverty zip code” in Harris County. According to a KHOU 11 report, more than 82,000 people from 10 different zip codes applied, but only 2 percent were ultimately selected.

In April, Paxton successfully obtained a temporary restraining order against the initiative, arguing that it violated the Texas Constitution, which prohibits local governments from awarding public funds to individuals, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.

“Harris County is acting as if the Texas Constitution does not apply to them and as if they do not have to abide by the rulings of the Texas Supreme Court,” Paxton said in a press release.

“Using public funds in this manner is a direct violation of the law. Harris County is willing to subvert the legal process, apparently out of desperation to get this money into certain hands as quickly as possible,” he added.

The Texas Supreme Court had previously suspended the Uplift Harris program, raising concerns about its constitutionality.

The court previously noted that “the State has raised serious doubts about the constitutionality of the Uplift Harris program, and this potential violation of the Texas Constitution could not be remedied or reversed if payments were to begin while the underlying appeals process is pending.”

A recent court filing from the Attorney General's Office outlines why Paxton believes the program is unconstitutional, and cites the program's arbitrary selection process for applicants and the fact that very few applicants (2%) were approved on a subjective basis as his only objection.

In response to the lawsuit, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee released a statement about X, saying, “Texas Republicans have sued Harris County over our guaranteed basic income pilot program, which uses federal funds to provide $500 a month to some of the lowest-income families in the county.”

“This is nothing more than an attack on local government and an attempt to grab headlines,” Menefee added.